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Comment by ryanwaggoner | Hacker News Reader

Serious question: I'm curious what you're talking about for high-income professionals?

If I'm making six figures as a dev in the US, I probably have fairly generous benefits, including healthcare, vacation, parental leave, retirement plan contributions, disability insurance, etc. And I'm probably paying less in overall taxes than most Europeans (though it really depends).

Of course, I don't have the safety net things that lower-income Europeans do, but I almost certainly don't need them.

So what would the equivalent person in the EU making half as much be getting from their government that I'm not getting from mine?

(Btw, this isn't an argument for the US approach being better overall, but just which system is better for the selfish high-income professional)

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> Of course, I don't have the safety net things that lower-income Europeans do, but I almost certainly don't need them.

You say that now while everything is up. Imagine getting run over by a car and not being able to work anymore, i bet you would be better off in a european country in that case, but of course it makes no sense to consider a worst case scenario like that.

However, many things are not great for high income people. Let's say you earn 6k EUR/month in Germany, that leaves you with 3.4k net (if you quit Church tax). A considerable amount (500 EUR) goes to state pension which everyone expects will be almost nothing when our generation reaches that age and the healthcare is pretty basic, but you could change to private insurance and save some money as long as you are young.

I believe competition between the Tech giants is just so much bigger in the US, that everyone in their vicinity has to match those crazy salaries to even have a chance. That is not really the case in Europe. Spotify, Soundcloud, Zalando etc. all lie in the 50-90k EUR range i would assume. I don't really know what can be earned at Facebook/Google/MSFT in Europe though.

I have 6 weeks of vacation a year (2 years out of uni) and 240 days of paid (75% of normal pay) parental leave (480 days in total for both parents). How's your vacation and parental leave in comparison?

A lot of white collar professionals get 3-6 weeks of vacation. That parental leave is eye-popping though. I know a bunch of professional women who got 3-6 months, which I think is regarded here as pretty generous.

But my larger point stands: the average cost per worker for those benefits is only maybe 10% higher than the cost in the US for our reduced benefits. So why are salaries 50% lower?

I think it does not stand.

in US 6 weeks of paid vacation is still rare in professionals. 3 is common. So you're using 3-6 while in europe there is guaranteed 6. This is apples and oranges.

Besides: this is in addition to the sick time. Sick time is paid and you don't use vacation time for that in europe. How is that in US? Can you get additional 4 weeks paid sick time? Can you get 8?

Then in addition you have this perks in US as long as you work as professional in top companies. While the real difference in terms of health care is after this work. Last I check, average age at FANG is below 30 yrs in USA! Wow! So imagine you're 45, you dont work at google/etc: then at low impact events or maybe even medium events if you dont have family healthcare is comparable (your savings cover it). But at high cost/high impact situations or medium ones if you have full family, you're not covered (add to this highest in the western world cost of healthcare in US). While it's state funded in europe also at the high cost level (read cancer therapies and all the things like). This is big difference for last 40 years of live.

And then you have mentioned maternity: that alone (and most of people have families in any place of world) from family perspective is a huge difference financially AND child development.

p.s. and there is cost of living. in US alone you can easily have it in SanFran at 1.77x of US average - you can imagine how it scale to the other parts of world? Sauce: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=cost+of+living+index+S...

Because EU tech companies are not really comparable to SV companies, capital is not that easily available just for the sake of growth. I guess there is a significant difference in business mindset. SV companies are in the game since the 70s.

There are simply much more well funded companies in the US, desperate to find good candidates, thus driving up salaries.

What's also interesting to consider is that developers here seems to be fine with earning close to non tech jobs employees. You can do really well in many industry sectors. As a bus driver in Germany you can earn $31,435 which already buys you an ok level of living.

Vacation in Europe is _much_ nicer than here. I started with my company with 3 weeks, the equivalent role in Europe has something like 5 weeks at start.

That’s not really much nicer, is it? That’s 2 weeks, which is an extra cost to the company of 4%. Hardly explains the huge salary discrepancy.

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