The people in these countries dont respect programmers, they pay them peanuts. How are they going to innovate?
- Do not respect Bankers and CEOs
- Do not respect academics
- Do not respect managers
- Respect teachers too much
- Respect waiters and delivery drivers too much
etc. It's all relative. It's all trade-offs. In the US, you can get actual rich by working a normal dev job.
On the other hand, many of my US high school teachers literally had to work at Wal-mart on the side. Unthinkable elsewhere. Result: Lots of innovation, but only by importing top tier talent from Asia and Europe, since high school education sucks maaajor balls compared to those countries.
So yeah, all trade-offs.
From what I hear, Germany seems relatively unique in having its programmers a part of the lower class.
US teachers are among the best paid teachers on earth. What US teachers are arguing about, is they believe they should be paid something closer to good nurse wages or engineers (ie closer to $80k to $100k, rather than $60k or $70k).
Some facts:
Entry level US high school teachers earn 1/3 more than in Japan or Ireland. They earn more than in Canada. They earn around 40% more than in New Zealand. They earn 80-100% more than in Israel. They earn slightly more than in the Netherlands and Austria, and 20% more than in South Korea (which pays its teachers very well vs their national income).
Entry level elementary school teachers in the US earn about 1/3 more than in South Korea, about 20% more than in Austria, 10-15% more than in Canada, 30-40% more than in Ireland and Japan, and drastically more than in countries like New Zealand or Italy.
At both high school and elementary levels, for both entry level and 10 years of experience, the US outranks Canada, Italy, Ireland, Japan, Austria, New Zealand. It's very comparable to what you see in the Netherlands and Australia for those.
Across each field of education, the US comes in in the top seven or eight for teacher pay, typically closer to the top 5. The one place it lags abnormally is the top end pay scale for teaching, where salaries don't match what you'd expect based on the mid-tier and entry level teacher salaries the US offers.
The US only consistently trails a few countries like Germany and Switzerland, when it comes to teacher pay. Those two pay particularly well for teaching (Switzerland more or less matches what you'd expect given their very high national incomes; and Germany pays an unusually outsized salary for teachers based on their national income level).
Maybe it's the US programmers, particularly the ones in Sillicon Valley that are being over - paid? The way I understand it, you can only expect six-figure salaries for working in one of the top companies in SV, and that only if you have graduated from one of the top universities in the area.
Also, there are six-figure salaries in the EU for programmers. You just have to know a bit of COBOL and not be afraid of biig scaary mainframes :0
(Taking Germany as an example, single, no kids) If you're offered say 100k in Germany - due to heavy tax-burden and social security costs - you will get less than 60k net. But what is hidden from your paycheck is that the company has to double your social security. So in reality you're getting paid 115k.
If you make more than 250k, that means you get an extra slap on the wrist: "wealthy tax" means every € you make above 250k gets taxed at an excessive 45%. Which is why at that kind of pay employees seek out different kinds of compensation schemes. And because of these schemes those people often aren't count in the employment statistics and thus lower the average pay.
On the plus side: From what I hear from European expats in the US, a lot of your high pay gets eaten by having to pay private enterprises for things that are provided by the government in Europe (getting a degree, good schools or kindergartens, healthcare, using the courts/legal system etc).
So let’s start with entry level: say 100k at Bay-Faang and 60k at a Berlin startup. Since you’re paid USD, 100k are actually just 88k.
Your cost of living will be a lot higher in say SF than in Berlin so it begs the question: Is 28k more a year worth it? How much of that goes to paying back student debt, housing, healthcare (the big ticket items eventually) and - if you plan on having kids - kindergarten and education?