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Comment by hocuspocus | Hacker News Reader

With a 60K salary you can live anywhere in Berlin (I'm 2 minutes from my office, in the most expensive part of the city). Many people mention London in this thread and even assuming a 60% raise (not impossible but not so easy either from what I've seen) I'm not sure I could live 2 minutes from work in central London. When I interviewed with Palantir they were offering 700 GBP/month to people who live within 15 minutes of their office, and that's probably going to barely cover 1/3 of your rent.

That being said, I'm all for higher wages in Berlin and happy to see that some companies (like mine, SoundCloud, Zalando, ...) are paying quite a bit above market average to attract talent.

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With a 60K salary you can live anywhere in Berlin

Except that people contemplating a move from elsewhere -- especially from outside the continent -- need to think about certain things beyond their immediate living expenses. Like, you know, building savings buffer for the (inevitable, for most) return home, and maintaining a salary level not astronomically far off from what they can get in other major hubs (simply to not have to flinch at that inevitable question, "How much are you currently making?").

Which is what is fundamentally broken with the idea that salaries just need to match local living expenses. 80K salaries would do a lot to bridge the gap for outside talent, and wouldn't cost all that much more -- and in any case not nearly much as the opportunity cost of missing business opportunities due to not being able to assemble performant teams.

I relocated from another continent. My company gives decent relocation/signing bonuses, so I assume our competitors do too.

Again, I'm all for higher wages in Berlin, but let's be realistic, the market rate is what it is, no company in its right mind is going to hire someone asking for +50% with no good reason.

Also, this thread is about European tech hubs. Have a look at average startup salaries in London, Paris, Nordic countries, ...

No company in its right mind is going to hire someone asking for +50% with no good reason.

They can give up on the idea of recruiting people from major hubs (SV/London/NYC) then.

Generally people who have some sense of reasonableness and proportion (that is, who don't aren't fixated on the dollar amount of their salary to the exclusion of all other factors) don't mind taking a bit of haircut to live in a greatly more affordable area (and to do interesting work).

But a 50% haircut ($120K to $60K) is really a hard pill to swallow for such folks.

> They can give up on the idea of recruiting people from major hubs (SV/London/NYC) then.

From the SV and NYC, you're probably right. From a company's point of view, why would you even try? In Berlin you can easily hire people from all over Europe and nearby countries without much immigration hassle.

As for London, I don't agree, it's very easy. London salaries aren't that great on average, not every software developer works at a hedge fund.

In Berlin you can easily hire people from all over Europe and nearby countries without much immigration hassle.

Well a few lines up from here someone was claiming the exact opposite -- "there's a huge lack of talent." (Which would seem to imply both local talent, and talent that can be drawn from outside).

Again, look at the competition. Is it any easier for other cities?

- London: higher salaries, much higher CoL => lower disposable income

- Dublin: barely higher salaries, higher CoL

- Amsterdam: similar/lower salaries, higher CoL

- Paris: lower salaries, higher CoL

- Stockholm, Helsinki: lower salaries, higher CoL (and crazy housing situation in Stockholm)

- Southern/Eastern Europe, Baltics: low CoL but the salaries are bad

You want to make good money? This leaves Oslo and Copenhagen where your overall purchasing power isn't going to be that much higher. The true outliers are Luxembourg and Switzerland where the tech ecosystem sadly isn't very exciting (why do you think a Swiss would take a job in Berlin? :)

I don't think Europe will ever be able to create a tech hub similar to the SV. And without a high concentration of talent, salaries can't go that much higher. London might get somewhere closer to NYC, but right now there's a very significant gap between finance and the rest. And Brexit will certainly not help.

You're missing places like Reading, where the salaries are London-ish (as you can just take a 25 minutes train to London for work), but the housing is cheaper. I pay for a decently sized house as much as I would pay for a tiny studio in London (and probably not in Zone 1)

Still probably more expensive than Berlin though :)

>> I relocated from another continent. My company gives decent relocation/signing bonuses, so I assume our competitors do too.

Not really. From my experience, only very large companies can sometimes offer you about 1-2K as a compensation for your relocation expenses and that's it. Consider yourself very lucky.

>> the market rate is what it is, no company in its right mind is going to hire someone asking for +50% with no good reason.

High living expenses is a good reason already. Also, what is not immediately obvious, an employee whose mind is constantly occupied with things like looking for a cheaper apartment or finding a more paying employment is not going to be performing well. He/she has other needs and building your product well just isn't high priority for them.

This. The situation is completely different for an outsider than for somebody who's already made their move or for a local person.

My experience has been that German bosses in general do not comprehend how hard and expensive it is for somebody from far away to come to Germany and organize their life in there. A lot of people arranged for everything they need in life years ago and already forgotten about it. With the young generation, many live with their parents, they basically have their own free apartment in the parent's house, they have a car purchased for them and some money in their bank account to cover their immediate needs. A very convenient setup which makes them oblivious to how much those things actually cost in the real world. It happened many times when in a conversation with them I shared my experiences and practically the universal reaction I was receiving from them was along the lines of: "Really? Now, that's tough. Good luck to you then."

If you come to a new country you by definition have nothing and you have to procure everything from the most basic tools to whatever you're going to need as a professional. Consider what you have to purchase/pay for:

Rent an apartment, pay the security deposit, pay the agent commission, purchase a set of furniture for the entire apartment (most are offered empty and unlivable), purchase the household appliances. Unless you fancy living with roommates, eating junk food and sleeping on the floor.

If you're a software engineer, you're most likely going to be buying a workstation, a couple of monitors, a large desk, an ergonomic chair, a printer, a scanner and whatever else you need. Unless you plan not to do anything programming-related beyond office hours.

If you're going to a location where the public transportation system is not well developed or if they like to call strikes there all the time, you'll also need to purchase a car and get yourself a local driving license. Unless you enjoy losing hours in commute and regularly being late for work.

See how the numbers quickly add up. And somebody's got to pay for all this fun.

Notice how I'm talking about the basic stuff only that practically every person would need. I haven't even gone into family/childcare expenses.

I remember having a conversation with my boss about all of this. I was trying to get across the point that the amount I was receiving was making it impossible for me to set up a life at that location. To which I was told if I was unable to rent an apartment then I should consider renting a room instead and share the apartment with others. Now, that's positive. Definitely a thing to say to a talent who has multiple other options and the whole world open. And since the same level of payment was being hold firmly by all other German companies I negotiated with, I finally made the choice to move out.

That probably explains why there's so little true talent you can find in Germany. The treatment just isn't good.

Putting it that way it means that Berlin is a cheap city to rent an apartment. You are totally right about that.

What is more interesting is that around EU prices of cars / consumer electronics, etc is relatively the same [1]. Not to mention airplane tickets, holidays which also cost the same in London and Berlin, but guys from London can spend on these more.

As a summary IMHO, having a small rent doesn't mean that competition rules shouldn't apply for Berlin and it's talent pool. From my perspective it looks like they don't. Founders put average salaries for their teams in their projection plans and in the end have their hands tied, because "no budget for 80k+ developer". It's a bit sad. Kudos to your companies ( exclude Zalando - sorry ) for putting more money for employees, nevertheless I consider them settled companies already, since they are huge.

[1] : http://www.iclarified.com/55272/iphone-6-prices-around-the-w...

I'm from Geneva, I know how it works :) London just doesn't seem to be so attractive outside FinTech. I have many coworkers from the UK and they all tell me their disposable income is higher over here, despite the lower wages and high taxes. We aren't a startup though, you're definitely right about that.

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