Out of interest which European tech hub did you move to? Berlin? I am currently looking at making a move and would love to hear some first hand experience of the tech hubs in Europe that people have moved to.
You can live for fairly cheap but eventually you'll get tired of graffiti, vagrants, and all night techno parties.
Unless you're into all of that and don't have any debts. Because you'll earn as a high level developer about 2.5-3k per month net.
And it was ok-ish safe (in 2013, not sure about now)
Bring on top of that the Germany tax rates and you will quickly be taking less home than in say the UK.
Rents are also not as low as it previously was. It has steadily been rising and buying a place is also out of the question now given how the property market has performed in Berlin.
Don't get me wrong, I love Germany and have personal connections to it but one needs to take everything into account when you make a move to a new city.
But for most people, those that are relocating for a job, healthcare doesn't cost much.
Beside that healthcare is almost free. You may need to pay for some "comfort medicine" (view by the state me or less randomly) and you pay 1€ per visit to a doctor.
The serious stuff is free (actually the more serious, the more free), dental is covered by the outer insurance (the debs depends on your contact), same for glasses.
So France is good when it comes to serious illnesses, gets expensive when having children (plenty of non reinbursed sprays for nose and throat) or when you have serious dental work, especially implants.
The main reason why this works is that Berlin is still really cheap compared to London but even compared to Hamburg or Munich. Rents are getting up though, still the amount of great food and entertainment for relatively cheap makes it easy to live with that salary.
I read an article from Buffer where they equaled 60k in Berlin to about 120k in SF or NY. I also think salaries in London are not substantially higher, while the city is so much more expensive.
I am still looking to go contracting at some point to make more money to raise a family, but for now while sharing an apartment with my girlfriend, it's decent money. Most of Berlin's working population gets far lower wages anyway, even in startups outside of development so for me as someone without an degree (yet), it always feels weird to earn substantially more than people that have a Masters in Business/Marketing.
Btw, why do you find London much expensive? I mean, you can rent (or mortgage) a decent apartment in the nice district for ~600 GBP per month. And the food, goods, appliances, etc... is similar, or cheaper. And most importantly - people speak English! :) The language factor was a revelation for me, after spending some time on the mainland Europe.
If you commute by long distance rail for at least an hour, an hour and a half maybe, to some small town way outside of London maybe you'll find something at that cost – but surely not in London proper.
My rents over the years in London where, per month, in order of when I lived there:
- apartment hotel studio in Limehouse: ~£2000-2500 - room in shared flat in Queensway: £1000 - 1-bed in Canary Wharf: ~£1650 (moved after a year because they wanted to back my rent by about 20%) - studio in Angel: ~£1200 - basement studio in Highbury&Islington: ~£1350
The studio in Angel was unbelievably cheap for a brand new building in a nice neighborhood. I was the first tenant. It had one of those beds you flip down from the wall kind of thing. Sounds off putting but it was actually a really smart feature, made the place feel like a 1-bed.
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/map.html?locatio...
Also note a lot of these would be likely £600+ since this doesn't show additional fees (estate agent, taxes etc.)
Now, this may seem like an abundance of results – but a number of these listings are actually house shares, parking lots, garages etc. Maybe you'd be ok with sharing a house (I wouldn't) but I'm sure we can all agree living in parking space is out of the question.
So maybe it's doable, but I think it'd be really hard work trying to find a place that's not kept together with shoe string and duct tape, while being in a decent area with a decent commute.
https://www.brent.gov.uk/media/169942/Local-Housing-Allowanc...
Had two friends living and working there, both left because they were spending 1000+ GBP to share houses or flats (both are married) with some other couples or people just so they could keep their commute under 30-40 minutes.
Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands also speak very good English and it's a quite nice experience to have the chance to learn a new language.
From my experience that is definitely not possible.
For £600 you can get a small room in a flatshare. Maybe a tiny studio or nice room really far from the centre. But a decent apartment in a nice district? Double that number and start from there... more realistic is 3x or 4x.
I would be very interested to hear your view on how the contracting market is in Berlin.
Here's an example (data scientist, but still counts in my book): https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/148268/senior-data-scientist-...
I know there are also offices of Google, Facebook, AirBnB, Pinterest in Berlin, although I'm not sure which of those have developers.
Some years ago I remember stories about assasinations, guns & stuff.