Comment by biglenny | Hacker News Reader

Comment by biglenny | Hacker News Reader

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Ignorant? It's a well known fact that European tech salaries (especially SWE salaries) are dwarfed by American/SV salaries. Just look up the difference in what GOOGLE pays its American vs EU employees. This doesn't even take into account taxation rate, which is favorable in US.

Virtually every "How much do you earn?" thread that pops up on HN has loads of comments with Europeans being surprised at the amount of money Americans make in tech.

Further - right now America is close to uncontested in the amount of technology it is producing and exporting. The only widely used European software I can think of is SAP. America is winning the talent war. I've only had a few friends who moved from US to Europe for tech work - and in all cases it had nothing to do with the job. Had more to do with wanting to "explore new places". On the other hand, I know tonnes of Euros, Indians, and Chinese who have come to US to work.

Those Europeans surprised at the the amount of money Americans make evidently aren't working in America. Maybe that tautologically makes them not the best, but I doubt it. Sometimes a "good enough" salary at a place you're comfortable beats an astronomical salary that requires moving to Silicon Valley.

That you personally only know few people who moved to Europe from the US but many who moved to the US probably says more about your location than about general trends. I know only few Germans who moved to the US for work, but many Americans, Iranians and Chinese who moved to Berlin. But that's where I live, so it's to be expected.

It's going to get even more extreme in the near future. Tesla is embarrassing all of the German auto manufacturers mightily. I think they'll need one or two to go down before they break out of their complacency.

It's forecast that Germany will lose around 1/3 of its auto industry jobs over the next few decades, in the switch to electric vehicles. Areas of auto manufacturing that they are very good at, are simply going to go away when everything is electric.

I would expect BMW to struggle the most among the German giants, if Tesla doesn't stop growing soon. The rise of Mercedes back to top form was a bad enough of a hit for BMW, then Tesla comes along poised to sell $40 billion worth of cars every year in the near future (all of which cost far more than ~$35k, which is a direct shot at all the luxury makers).

Germany is sitting in a great position nationally (epic trade surplus, good national finances, and reasonably fine household finances), now is the time to aggressively invest if you're them, to try to build out a large number of new technology jobs.

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