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Comment by conanbatt | Hacker News Reader

A software engineer in a startup in berlin earns maybe a median salary of 60k euros ayear at a 40% tax rate. Thats less of what interns make in the us at a 30% tax rate.

An experienced engineer at google or facebook make 200k with a sizable signup bonus. As far as I know, theres no comparison between what a soft dev makes in the us and what he makes in europe.

This is from someone that lives in south america, and is considering moving to either europe, NZ or America, and hands down america pays so much more than anything else.

Not to mention that people criticizing work-life balance of engineers in the us havent visited google offices.

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You're comparing median salary in Berlin with the high end in the US, and you are ignoring much of the complexities that were already mentioned such as the incredibley high cost of living in San Francisco where google and facebook pay those salaries.

I'm in the Boston market and median salary for devs is around 80-90k when you include all skill levels, but every single dev I know has roommates or an hour+ commute into the city and higher healthcare costs than Germany.

I'd believe that you would make more overall money in the US once you got to the higher end of the market, but it's not as simple as a calculation as you are making it out to be

> every single dev I know has roommates or an hour+ commute into the city

They should probably look for housing near a commuter rail then

That's the "has roommates" part. That housing is going to be more expensive.

I live in the South Shore near the commuter rail. It's pretty affordable for someone making $80k.

Do you not have student loans? A few people in my social circle managed to get out of college without them through parents paying/scholarships and they have a much different calculus than the majority of us

My wife had some, but not a lot, and they're paid off now. So, yeah, you might be right.

This generally won't solve the commute issue; you spend time driving, parking, on the train, walking/subway to work area. And then all of that in reverse. You still 'lose' 50+ minutes each way.

I have a much shorter commute than many of my colleague who actually live in Boston.

If nothing else it's much more pleasant, anyway.

Bike to / from the commuter rail

Biking is probably slower than driving.

I know several devs who are within a few minutes walk of a commuter rail and still deal with the hour+ commute. The best I've seen is my own 12 minute walk I had for a few months but the job didnt pay nearly enough for the rent in the same area and I had to move on to a new job, or if you get the reverse commute, but those are uncommon

Im pretty sure that even after adjustment, savings rates for software engineers in SF is much higher than in Berlin.

There are many perks to Berlin over SF, but salaries and net income are not it.

So why are you even comparing the two and not e.g. working for Google in San Francisco and Zurich?

Was not the point of the thread that money is not the only factor in life?

That's the point everyone else is making, yet conanbatt keeps coming back to comparing salaries between Berlin and San Francisco as an example of higher salaries in the US. Berlin is not even the highest paying city in Germany, let alone Europe.

I'd go as far as claiming Berlin is a very low paid place in Europe. Living costs and standards are quite low here compared to Munich or Amsterdam. You'd earn 50% more there for the same work.

Berlin is a start-up hub, and its a place i know. I cant speak for Zurich from first hand experience.

Im just emphasizing that the fact that europe has benefits, it does not necessarily (or likely) outweigh the difference in salary from one to the other. You are certainly taxed more by a lower wage and by a higher tax rate that could compensate ubering every day and private schooling.

If you end up choosing the US, and go to an at will state, keep in mind that your employer can fire you for wearing the wrong color of socks, even if they never told you which color is the right one (no, really). I think it boils down to whether you want to take care of yourself, or if you let the state do it for you. I would definitely take the 60K if it includes awesome public transport, unemployment money, affordable healthcare, a month of holidays, and having free time in the evenings for hobbies.

Your priorities, of course, may be different.

Getting new hires up to speed is expensive enough that they'd be pretty stupid to actually do this. Sure a few do, but it isn't common.

Also, a couple minutes with google turns up this: https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=AVD_DUR . If it says what I think it says, getting a new job really is easier in the US (like it should be, because as any economist will tell you this is what has to happen when a bad hire is less of a disaster for the employer).

I think it boils down to whether you want to take care of yourself, or if you let the state do it for you.

In part, yes.

But also, there are two approaches to reducing downtime. You can increase MTBF (make things more reliable, make it harder to get fired); or you can reduce MTTR (make things easier to fix, make it easier to get hired somewhere new). Europe goes with the first approach, the US goes with the second (which I very much prefer, because it doesn't gum things up).

Separately, there's also making downtime less of a problem (failover systems, all the various other social safety net things). The US is generally known to kinda suck at this.

It's not all of Europe which has strict laws about firing people. For an example, the Danish concept of "Flexicurity"[0], where the state protects the worker against the financial trouble of getting fired, but not getting fired itself. Of course, this tend to lead to a rather high tax rate.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexicurity

>Getting new hires up to speed is expensive enough that they'd be pretty stupid to actually do this. Sure a few do, but it isn't common.

I believe the point they were making is simply that they can. You're not protected (aside from the small handful of reason that actually are protected).

> If you end up choosing the US, and go to an at will state, keep in mind that your employer can fire you for wearing the wrong color of socks, even if they never told you which color is the right one (no, really)

I live in a country where you have to pay insurmountable amounts of money to fire employees. The salaries that us pays are about 8x. Gimme at will employment.

> I would definitely take the 60K if it includes awesome public transport, unemployment money, affordable healthcare, a month of holidays, and having free time in the evenings for hobbies.

I had plenty of free time in SF to do whatever i wanted when I worked there. Maybe i was lucky, but i did not find work-life balance to be particularly out of whack. Europe is more relaxed, but also less ambitious in terms of culture. That can be frustrating as well.

> I would definitely take the 60K if it includes awesome public transport, unemployment money, affordable healthcare, a month of holidays, and having free time in the evenings for hobbies.

You are paying for all those things, its not like they are free in europe. You can also pay for them in the US on software engineer salaries. Google has ample pto, facebook has parental rights, etc. You can always take unpaid time off, something easier to do in the US than in other countries.

> your employer can fire you for wearing the wrong color of socks

Adding restrictions on employer's ability to fire makes employers far less likely to hire. It enriches the already employed at the expense of the unemployed. If anything it makes more sense to have at-will employment in countries with strong social safety nets because unemployment is less disruptive there.

Oh please, no. Please don't "improve" work life balance by making work more "fun" a la Google. I don't want to have "fun" at work, I want to have plenty of time off work to be with my family.

I've not worked for Google, but their campus always struck me as a slick disguise for a poor work-life balance for single twenty-somethings.

"Not to mentioned that people criticizing work-life balance of engineers in the us haven't visited google offices."

Google and other tech companies in the U.S having nice offices doesn't mean the work life balance of Googlers is something to envy. Probably the opposite actually (three meals a day makes you stay there for dinner, nap rooms to let you stay even later). Not a great work life balance.

Source: know Googlers, have been to Google offices

As far as I saw, the ambiance was pretty relaxed, and there were plenty of benefits like gyms, music studios, hardware shops, etc to delve into hobbies. Im sure there are people working 12 hours a day, and im sure the vast majority barely work their 8.

When I was in grad school, I sometimes worked for days straight, with just naps.

> An experienced engineer at google or facebook make 200k with a sizable signup bonus.

I think Silicon Valley megacorps are exceptional outliers. Obviously people can make silly money at Google, but so do athletes in the largest leagues. It's just not a useful comparison between continents with millions of employees. Exclude the top 10% and bottom 10% makes for a more reasonable comparison.

They are, but the OP's point is fair even if we're looking at more "typical" US salaries for software engineering.

A software engineer in SF is also paying somewhere around 400% more for housing, and 100% more for everything else than a software engineer in Berlin. Quite an important note when comparing salaries.

Higher costs, lower stability, and no safety net... I think that I would prefer that Berlin salary (and I'm a US resident).

Most devs do not work in San Francisco and the salaries in cities with more reasonable costs of living are still pretty good.

Cost of living is always important to consider. Looking at this site[0] for a ballpark figure, it would seem that someone living in San Francisco needs to be earning at least the double of someone in Berlin, to afford the same standard of living. San Francisco is still a very attractive place to work as a Software Engineer, but it's not as black and white, as the huge difference in pay might make it look.

[0] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

Software engineers most of the time get fed by the company and i distrust, at least with my spending habits, the cost of consumer prices like clothing or gadgets being cheaper in europe than in the us.

Housing is the main difference: you can get a fairly large place in berlin, and you can have a family there. But SF is one city, there are pleny of other cities in the us more family friendly (if not any other city).

I remember recently a map showing the purchasing power by salary per state, and the biggest purchasing power was nebraska.

Take living costs and so forth into account also. California probably isn't as great at the figures suggest.

That said, speaking as a New Zealander: don't come here. There are no jobs, and if you find one, you will be underpaid. If you're looking for the weather and standard-of-living combination offered by the southern hemisphere, consider Melbourne or Sydney instead. Very few of my graduating class at the University of Auckland will end up remaining in the city, I suspect.

Wow this is true?

I just heard NZ was doing a state sponsored world-wide call for workers. Is it because people are leaving? Where are they leaving to?

I mean, there are jobs generally, but not really in tech. I was slightly exaggerating to say there are 'no' jobs, but in reality the NZ tech industry is not very mature.

If people leave, normally they leave for Australia (because it's very easy to do so).

I can not have aging grandma nor children in google offices. I can not engage in personal hobbies that are not company sanctioned there. I dont have privacy there.

As a former Googler who was involved in comparing pay across Google sites, Zurich was on par with Mountain View in gross pay (and ahead of New York), and after-tax pay was markedly higher in Zurich.

While Berlin is a great city, it is very far from being a top-pay city in Europe.

are you swiss? how easy is it for a foreigner to work in zurich?

I was in the London office (until a year ago) and led an engineering team spanning London, Zurich and New York. The majority of Google Zurich's engineers are not Swiss—elsewhere from Europe, from across Asia and many from the US.

After tax pay better be higher in Zurich... it's one of the most expensive cities to live in, especially as an ex-pat, in the world (and considerably more pricey than SF.)

> Not to mention that people criticizing work-life balance of engineers in the us havent visited google offices.

Office are part of work, not part of life

I would say there's no comparison between what a developer makes in the US with the rest of the world.

When I was in the US working first at Apple and later at Livescribe, I was essentially breaking even on salary vs. cost of living.

Moving back to Berlin, I went part time because it was sufficient.

Break-even with an apple eng salary in the us? I cant believe that is true.

Not sure about break-even, but Apple notoriously underpays relative to the rest of SV and the caliber of work/time expected.

Cost of living there is low and with phenomenal transit and medical benefits

We have Google offices in Europe too you know.

Also in Argentina.

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