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Comment by throwaway494949 | Hacker News Reader

If you're a senior software engineer, come to Sweden. You'll at least get 6000 usd/month as an employee. Management usually has a background in tech, you get lots of vacation, parental leave, etc. You're not expected to stay longer than 5 pm and working from home is common. There are many interesting jobs in finance, telecom, automotive, entertainment, medicine, defence, and there are plenty of startups.

I work as a contractor in Stockholm (long term assignments; basically like employment but I pay my own taxes), and I can save ~80k usd per year (after expenses and taxes, no family though, but I live in the city center). To get paid more, I either have to specialize hard or move to Silicon Valley.

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Better yet, come to Switzerland and earn > 10K usd/ month; and on top of that, you pay only a fraction of the Swedish taxes.

Maybe, but what's the cost of living in Switzerland? And is it easy to get a job for someone only speaking English? And don't you have to pay for your own healthcare?

The cost of living in Switzerland is high, that's true. But in IT the office language is English. And you have to pay your own healthcare insurance but afaik that's the case in most of Europe.

In my experience it is a bit more difficult to find a job here compared to the rest of Europe, and that's because there normally are more candidates for every job offering.

I thought it was pretty tough on immigration side of things?

Depends of the country. If you are french, it's quite easy to work there. If you are Estonian, probably less.

There are not part of europe, so they do whatever they want.

>There are not part of europe, so they do whatever they want.

My map says otherwise... Switzerland is most definitely part of Europe. Maybe not the EU, but that's a different thing.

Yeah, and the internet is not the web, but when I say I'm going to surf the internet, you get my point I think.

Estonia is part of the EU since 2004.

Not for a EU citizen with a signed job contract.

Not for most EU citizens.

That's sort of the dilemma I see - living in the US and make more money compared to EU friends, but the lifestyle component of US work life is much behind EU. I can see how working in the US to earn more money during younger years might be good, then moving to EU later in life to enjoy the social benefits. Even in Silicon Valley, there are many people I know who make 6-figure salaries, but spend 2+hrs per day commuting, live in small apartments since rent is so high, and basically spend any time not eating/sleeping at or around work.

Does $72K go far in Sweden? I would assume not due to taxes...? I'm in a position of ignorance so I'm just looking to get a better idea of what it's like there :)

$72K is about $50K post tax (including one month of paid vacation). $72K is also a lower bound: I often see positions for ~95K-100K. And if you work as a contractor, ~$160K.

The national median wage is ~$35K ($27K post tax) afaik, and people live good lives on that, albeit in smaller towns.

And if you have a mortgage, you can deduct 30% of interest payments.

>The national median wage is ~$35K ($27K post tax) afaik, and people live good lives on that, albeit in smaller towns

That doesn't sound like much help for a single expatriate coming to Sweden for software work. They're going to want to live in a city where there's lots of other people (including other expats) to network with, date, etc.

True. A common starting salary in Stockholm is $50K ($37K), with that you can afford a nice and central apartment (~$20K without a mortgage, otherwise [potentially much, of course] lower).

Note that you don't rent apartments, you buy them. It makes a comparison harder.

I just realized "Sisu" would be a sweet name for a programming language.

Darkness, cold, property market - no thanks.

The first two ones aren't much worse than London (actually -- it seems Stockholm gets more sun on average per year: http://svemet.org/stocompare.htm). The property market isn't a problem if you make this much; also, the buildings tend to be well-kept.

But yes, dark and slushy winters.

Those first two are positives for me.

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