[ChemSpider]

Honest question: What major German company is in a 20,000 pop town in the middle of nowhere?

And if so, would that mean life in such a town is worse than in a comparable small town somewhere in the middle of the US?

Indeed, salaries are better in the US, especially AI jobs salaries.

But you also need less savings in the EU due to a much better social security system, e. g. free healthcare in case you get unemployed, free university (that alone saves you > 100K US$/kid),...

[leviliebvin]

Lots of bigger companies like Zeiss or Bosch have many locations and depending on your team you might or might not end up in a really terrible location.

> would that mean life in such a town is worse than in a comparable small town somewhere in the middle of the US?

You lose a lot of the advantages that you listed such as public transportation, walkable cities and free healthcare (availability is terrible in certain locations). But honestly, it's a terrible location to live in, if you want to have any kind of social life, and consider that as a foreigner you probably don't have loads of contacts in the country.