[disgruntledphd2]

Feck all, unfortunately. Like, if you either 1. buy a house some years back or 2. get an off-books rental through someone you know then you can do well.

Alternatively, if you work for one of the Big Tech places then you'll get a really good wage (by irish standards) as well as enough benefits to make you feel a bunch better off. Additionally the bonuses and equity there help a lot.

But yeah, Ireland's super expensive. Our household is at about the 85% percentile income, and we have a (small/expensive) house but we don't have a lot left after all of our outgoings.

So yeah, you can get a better salary but you probably won't have a whole lot more disposable income (but apart from all that, ireland's a great place to live).

[CalRobert]

Yeah, we tried to hack this by buying a cheap place in Offaly near the train and working remote, and it was kinda-sorta OK except that our neighbours were hell on Earth. Gave up and moved to the Netherlands which has been great for our kids' independence.

I do miss a good snug though.

[FirmwareBurner]

Aren't Netherlands wages lower than Germany except for US big-tech and HFT?

I got a 70k offer with 10 YoE last week from a recruiter to move to NL and it felt like a ripoff. So I don't know where these fancy NL wages are outside the top 1%.

[CalRobert]

I dunno, I live in NL but work remote for a US company

[disgruntledphd2]

> Aren't Netherlands wages lower than Germany except for US big-tech and HFT?

Generally you want to work for US companies, see the pragmatic engineers trimodal compensation article for details. The US thing works as you're cheap for them (relative to the US) but the wage is better than you can get locally.

[FirmwareBurner]

Unfortunately there are no US companies hiring in my country.

They all seem to be only in Dublin and Amsterdam.

[disgruntledphd2]

Yeah, that's the problem. Basically to get the good wages, you need to live somewhere expensive. If you have property/friends in those places it makes lots of sense, but otherwise I'm not sure it does.

[FirmwareBurner]

But then you're not part of NL jobs market but the US one, no?

[disgruntledphd2]

Sortof, you get NL/EU employment benefits (and taxes) and a premium to NL wages, but you're not paid US wages (unfortunately).