[fooker]

Sure, if they want to pay decent salaries.

But no, you can make 3-4x in the US. That’s not an exaggeration. And before someone says ‘free healthcare’, big-tech employers in the US provide pretty nice insurance for employees that caps maximum out of pocket expenses to about a week of your salary.

EU (except Zurich and London) tech salaries have sort of stagnated to a point that you make about the same in Bangalore, and spend significantly more.

[piperswe]

Conveniently enough, neither Zurich nor London are in the EU anyways!

[fooker]

You’re right, I meant Europe.

But makes me wonder if EU policies are contributing to wage stagnation.

There had been several high profile cases in the US about wage stagnation, so much that tech companies are a bit wary of this topic.

[foldr]

Surely you mean wage suppression (as in e.g. the unlawful agreement between Apple and Google).

[fooker]

They are the same thing.

In silicon valley, you can not afford to underpay good engineers, as they'll move across the street and get a job that pays double after a year.

In most other places, this ecosystem does not exist because it is ridiculously difficult to start and operate a company unless you are part of some conglomerate.

[foldr]

Wage stagnation can happen without any kind of deliberate conspiracy.

[fooker]

True, a bad economy will stagnate wages by definition.

[verzali]

Losing a week of salary is still pretty bad. How many days off do you get? Days that you can actually take without losing the chance for a promotion?

[fooker]

> Losing a week of salary is still pretty bad

Keep in mind the salary is 3-5x for big tech positions with 5+ years of experience. Check levels.fyi if you don’t believe me.

> Days that you can actually take without losing the chance for a promotion?

Europe wins hands down on this. I happen to have a great employer where I have taken 4-5 weeks off a year without issues, but that’s not the norm in the US.

[lawn]

Add free education and childcare to the mix and the difference shrinks quite a bit.

Not to mention the fascism problem of course.

[fooker]

Free education and childcare doesn’t come close to shrinking a 300k USD gap in total compensation. Real number in my case, I looked into moving to Berlin last year.

> Not to mention the fascism problem of course.

Agreed.

The US is going in a terrible direction with this. I hope Europe has learned from history and won’t follow.

[surgical_fire]

I could make 2x-3x if I moved to the US.

Turns out I can live a pretty comfortable life with EU salary. I could afford a house, car, family. Quality of Life is pretty great.

I am not sure if the extra money in the US would be worth it.

[joe_mamba]

>I could afford a house, car, family.

You're in the minority now in EU if you can afford to have those things now. The housing and CoL crunch is real and many industries suffered layoffs. Q3 2025 youth unemployment is around 20-25% in several EU countries including developed ones like Finland, it's no longer an issue just for the less developed southern ones.

>I am not sure if the extra money in the US would be worth it.

Since you already have a house and everything, then yeah it makes no sense for you. But I would do it in a heartbeat if I could.

[surgical_fire]

> You're in the minority now in EU if you can afford to have those things now.

A quick search tells me that home ownership in the EU is Approximately 70%, ranging from around 95% in countries such as Romania and Slovakia, to around 50% in Germany. Non-EU citizens disproportionately owns less houses.

So, no. I am not at all in the minority.

Youth unemployment is an issue, being 15% in the EU as a whole, with some countries hovering on 30%. The US has 10% of youth unemployment (considering their labor laws are appallingly bad for workers, I am not sure if this is much of an improvement).

> Since you already have a house and everything, then yeah it makes no sense for you. But I would do it in a heartbeat if I could.

Good for you, may you achieve your goals.

I didn't own a house until a year ago. Refusing offers from the US and moving to EU was likely the best decision I ever made.

I had a life threatening illness not long ago. In the US I would likely be either bankrupt of dead. I appreciate the safety net and labor protections here, even with the higher taxes.

[joe_mamba]

> to around 50% in Germany.[...] Non-EU citizens disproportionately owns less houses.[...] So, no. I am not at all in the minority.

Do you see the issue here?

[fooker]

You are right, going the other way can be tough though.

There are hobbies and interests you can pursue with a tech salary in the US that are somewhat out of reach in Europe without generational wealth.

[burnerzzzzz]

Curious: What hobbies etc are out of reach on an EU tech salary?

[bombcar]

I may be wrong but my understanding is that it's not uncommon to find out someone in the USA is a private pilot, no matter what their job is (e.g., if your grocer or mechanic mentioned they have a license you'd not be shocked).

Apparently it's much rarer in the EU, but that might not only be a cost issue.

[fooker]

Planes, boats, racing, horses.

The rule of thumb is that expensive hobbies cost in a year what the median yearly income in your area is.

A European tech salary would be about 2x of the median while a US tech salary can be 5-6x.

[lostlogin]

> I hope Europe has learned from history and won’t follow.

France was recently an absolute inspiration in this regard.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgrlxn4ngdgo

[lawn]

Most people in the US don't earn SV top salaries, and for most people the difference is not that big (was my point).

[fooker]

Right.

I not talking about average wages, as that has no bearing on whether I would want to live somewhere.

I'll primarily look at what I can make and what my quality of life would be like.

[lawn]

You are however making sweeping generalizations that you extrapolate from your own personal experience, while making hard connections between quality of life and the ability to earn more than your peers.

Meanwhile the Nordics for example consistently rank much higher in health, happiness, and quality of life, despite having lower top wages.

[fooker]

I agree, not sure what the generalization was.

My point was that if you have a senior level big tech job in the US, it makes zero sense to move to Europe unless you have family there or want to make a significant financial sacrifice.

Obviously Europe wins for workers in general, and if I wanted to work in a car factory’s yes I’d do my best to work in Europe.

[ponector]

And it's really hard to land a job in Switzerland simply because there is a small market with tendency to offshore everything except high management.

Swissre, UBS and many others all have open positions in Spain/Poland/India, not actually in Switzerland

[MichaelZuo]

Actual formal engineering jobs in Switzerland come with benefits gold plating better than full federal government employees in the USA. And they’re almost as hard to sack.

Nobody gives out positions like that easily to non geniuses. And even for more ordinary very smart candidates, there are enough of them to have a few hoops to jump through.

[idle_zealot]

> But no, you can make 3-4x in the US. That’s not an exaggeration

Eh, we'll see how long that lasts as the transition from financial capital to global pariah progresses. It's quite possible that our labor is extremely overvalued.

[fooker]

Right now it relies on silicon valley's ability to churn out unicorns again and again.

That part seems to be taking an ugly turn nowadays by a bunch of military AI/drone swarm/etc focused startups. I'm guessing that eventually after the Apple/Google model of making money is dead, you'll have to work for Skynet if you want to make money.

[jltsiren]

Those "decent salaries" have caused a lot of trouble in the US. They are probably not that good for the society, even if they attract foreign talent.

There is not much difference in labor share of GDP between the US and the EU. People who work for living get a similar share of the value they create in both blocks on the average (maybe a bit less in the US), but it's less evenly distributed in the US.

Top 10% earners are now responsible for ~50% of consumer spending. That doesn't mean billionaires and capitalists, but upper middle class professionals and other high earners. The economy is great on the average, but most people don't feel it.

[fooker]

> They are probably not that good for the society

I don't disagree, as in an abstract sense inequality is bad for society.

Try to understand why the US has high tech salaries though. It is because the last 40 years have made it pretty easy and convenient to start companies.

Hence, good employees always have great options or can just start their own companies.

[overfeed]

> Try to understand why the US has high tech salaries though. It is because the last 40 years have made it pretty easy and convenient to start companies.

I thought this was because US trade and foreign policy coerced most of the world to open up their markets to high-margin American services via treaties. It's easy to pay high salaries when you're vacuuming money from around the world, and your product (software) has very low marginal cost of replication.