[TexanFeller]

Strong worker protections are a major reason that big tech and many other industries have a much smaller presence in Europe and pay far less to Europeans. You're worth less if you might be absent on parental leave for a year at a time. You're higher risk to hire if you can't be fired easily etc. Protections have a cost. My friends that moved to UK/Europe get half their former salary and have much higher living expenses and taxes. I also have several friends that moved to TX because compensation in Europe is terrible.

[deserialized]

Maybe if you're from FAANG land. I took 10k cut (90k to 80k) from my salary leaving Seattle but gained a union, 20 more days of vacation, a 8% holiday bonus, 90% cheaper insurance, and 500$ less in rent per month in Amsterdam

[marcusverus]

Your pay cut wasn't significant because you apparently went from earning a ~40th percentile US SWE salary to earning a ~90th percentile Dutch SWE salary. If you had been paid a ~40th percentile Dutche SWE salary, you would have taken a 50% pay cut.

My percentiles are based on Payscale data.

[reacharavindh]

Yeah, and much lower costs of childcare, schooling?. Much lower chances of gun violence, and exteremeness of inequality in the society.

As most things, the comparison is dependent on what state of life you’re at and your preferences.

[ActorNightly]

You took way more than $10k cut when you consider taxes involved.

Of course this varies state by state, but generally for tech, you net more in US on the average even when you pay for everything that you get with taxes in EU. Starting salaries even outside fang could easily be in like $130k in areas that aren't tech hubs and don't have an inflated COL - in EU this is unheard of.

[yladiz]

Even for tech I’m skeptical of this, and so please cite if you have data to back it up. What are you considering part of what you get in, for example, Germany with taxes, but paid for out of pocket in the US?

[ActorNightly]

You can look at the cost of living comparators, but here is a rough outline.

Starting salary in US for SDE is probably like 100k. Going of single income tax filings your approximate aggregate tax rate will be ~%15. if you have state income tax, prolly like ~20% aggregate.

In Germany you would start at something like $70k and get a 42% tax rate afaik.

So right there you get more than twice the money left over after taxes.

Living costs would probably be close to each other, rent is probably cheaper in Germany cities but groceries and goods are more expensive.

And health insurance and costs are a small percentage of the salary.

The only big difference is that in US you sort of need a car, but again, with monthly cost of a finance for a car you are still not hitting

The biggest difference in cost comes when you start having kids - in US you pay closer to 25% income for all things child related, so that eats into the extra money real quick. For outside of tech, if you make middle class salary in the 70k range, you are much better off in EU, because a lot of things are heavily subsidized.

[deafpolygon]

"There are only two kinds of people I hate.. people who are intolerant of other people's cultures.. and the Dutch!"

[WeylandYutani]

It all depends on what you value. Dutch labour laws are not written for highly educated tech bros but designed to protect everyone.

Wealth inequality for instance is something that permeates political discourse. Americans don't give a shit about it at all. Making society nicer for everyone and not leaving anyone behind.

[throwaway6734]

>Making society nicer for everyone and not leaving anyone behind.

In the short term, Europe is much better at this than the US, but the long term sustainability of the European welfare state will be under serious threat over the next 50 years due to the horrible demographics of most European countries

[yladiz]

Please cite if you have some sources to back this up, in particular the solvency of the welfare system across multiple European countries and the projected demographics over the next decades. I’m skeptical it’s as anywhere close to as bad as you state here.

[throwaway6734]

Look at the demographic pyramids:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Italy

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Spain

Massive bulges over 40 that will require support from a shrinking base of young people.

[dantheman]

Making society nicer for everyone requires investment.

[smcleod]

* in people, not profits.