Comment by estsauver | Hacker News Reader

Comment by estsauver | Hacker News Reader

I've found Amsterdam to really have everything I'm looking for in a tech hub.

- Super friendly and easy regulatory environment. The Dutch have regulations but there are actual humans you can call at almost any department to get an answer. It's really incredible. I've literally spent more time waiting in the line at SEA/TAC customs then I've spent combined at the dutch immigration service IND.

- Incredible internet. I have 500MB/50Mb at my house and it's no big deal, and perhaps equally importantly my latencies are incredible. The second largest peering point in the world is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam_Internet_Exchange

- Unmatched bicycle infrastructure and public transit infrastructure.

- Airport with incredible connectivity. I can have direct flights to most major American cities, almost all of Europe is a ~30$ easyjet flight away and Nairobi is an 8 hour direct flight.

- Pretty reasonable combined income tax burden. There's a 30% ruling that lets you exclude the first 30% of your income as if it didn't exist for most tech workers in NL.

- Reasonable rents (I paid 1450 Eur for a furnished 1BR, probably no where near average rent in Nashville but I live in the center.)

- Almost no homeless people. It's pretty great to live in a society that actually takes care of people.

- Tolerant attitude genuinely. Whether it's marijuana or prostitution in 2018 or other religions in the 18th/19th centuries, Amsterdamers don't really care if it doesn't impact your neighbors.

If you're thinking about taking the plunge and moving somewhere, drop me a line at earl at apolloagriculture dot com. DAFT (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAFT) makes it pretty easy to set up a Dutch company and get immigration to go with it. If you don't want to start a company/go it yourself and can code, send me an email.

To be eligible for the 30% tax ruling, the company needs to prove that it cannot find an equivalent Dutch person. It isn’t a blanket ruling for any foreign person. Even if you do get it, it only lasts for n years. If you don’t, you will find that in light of the otherwise very high taxes and low salaries in comparison to nearby tech hubs, your one bedroom, 1450 a month apartment becomes a dream.

Blue cards and HSM pretty much always get the ruling, it's definitely not any foreign person. I believe the 30% ruling lasts 5 years now, which also means that you would typically be eligible to be a permanent dutch resident. At that point, you'd have largely the same access to social services (disability etc.) that dutch people do and it seems fair to have equal taxes.

What would be the lower tax/high salary comparable in Europe? London has remarkably similar salaries and super high cost of living. (I hear Berlin has a cost of living that's exploding and generally lower salaries.)

Hamburg checking in at 930 € furnished. 15 minutes from the city center. My salary is 3.200 a month after taxes. I have a blue card.

Looks pretty comparable to salary + cost of living in Amsterdam.

https://thetax.nl/?year=2018&startFrom=Year&salary=66873.6&a...

Blue card minimum salary included in the above link. Hard to know if you'd come out ahead given local cost of living, but you can also probably beat the blue card minimum for your salary in the Netherlands. I know a couple people who make > 100k euros (some contractors, some who have made it pretty far up at bigger companies.)

I’ve lived and worked in both NL and London for significant lengths of time.

You are wrong about taxes. In the current tax year, 70k in one year in London would give you 4052 per month after tax. In NL, you would get 3668. That is no insignificant difference. You can verify this by using an online tax calculator.

I also don’t agree about the difference in cost of living. To dispel the most common trope, half a litre of beer in Amsterdam is at least 5EUR, and in London a pint (just over half a litre) is 5 pounds, about the same, given differences of currency and units. Eating out is strictly cheaper in London, and of higher quality. Some supermarket items are more expensive from my experience.

For a one bedroom flat not too far from say, The City or Old Street, you’re paying at least 1200, and maybe 1400 for something of higher quality.

On jobs, I have personally been hard pressed to find anything near the same variety and range of salaries in Amsterdam. There is a reason why so many Dutch programmers move abroad.

To attempt to add a bit of rigor to the discussion, here's what Numbeo thinks about the cost of living. They have 70k Eur in London as being about the same as 62.5k euros in Amsterdam taking into account taxes[0].

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

I definitely agree that there are more/interesting jobs for a lot of people in London, but I think that's changing. I think the other hard part for Dutch programmers is that the education system seems to be quite good, leading to a pretty deep talent market for a somewhat shallow hiring pool.

I do have one bit of terrible news: I think you've been overpaying for beers in Amsterdam. ;)

[0] One phenomena I've noticed is expats/immigrants tend to get better deals on housing because they have less cultural baggage about which areas are "nice" and can often see with clear eyes which areas are actually nice and which are actually bad.

Your argument isn’t rigorous in that it assumes salaries are the same. A programmer earning 70k in London would be hard pressed to earn the equivalent in Euros in Amsterdam. Also as someone who has spent a good bit of money in bars and clubs all around Amsterdam as a student, and not just as a tourist in the red light district, I don’t know where you’ve managed to get beer below 2.50 apart from one or two self-professed anarchist establishments, so I don’t know how rigorous a source Numbeo is either.

It's tough for me to know how engineering salaries stack up, I'm only hiring in Amsterdam and haven't looked deeply at what London markets look like. At least at the high end, they tend to be relationship and individual market driven. At a macro level, payscale has some interesting comparisons here with N> 250 each.

Software Engineer:

https://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job=Software_Engineer/S...

https://www.payscale.com/research/NL/Job=Software_Engineer/S...

Senior Software Engineers (N> 400 for both)

https://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job=Senior_Software_Eng...

https://www.payscale.com/research/NL/Job=Sr._Software_Engine...

For beers: I think you're looking at the "Grocery section", Beers are priced at 4 euros in the "Restauraunt" zone. I will, in actuality, buy you a delicious <4 euro beer at one of a few bars around our office. I don't know how many other consumer indices are backed by a personal guarantee.

We’re comparing London and Amsterdam, and then you come up with a source that compares countries.

I’m also going to have to take you up on that <4 Euro half litre of beer next time I’m in Amsterdam.

> where you’ve managed to get beer below 2.50

At vending machines in train stations. When I was there, cheap Belgian beers were about EUR 2.50.

One important note for US citizens, you still owe federal income tax even when permanently living abroad unless you renounce your citizenship. So while the taxes might be reasonable there, you still may owe the US too for the difference between what you pay there and what you would’ve paid here. It’s even more complicated if you are self-employed in another country. There’s a lot of nuances that I’m not qualified to cover, so I highly recommend talking to an accountant before taking the plunge.

Some light reading:

https://www.expatinfodesk.com/expat-guide/nationality-specif...

My understanding is if you are able to claim the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion then you wouldn't owe any US Taxes (unless over the $103,900 for 2018), but haven't done this myself and agree that an accountant would need to be in the mix for US Citizens living overseas.

Here is another link if anyone is interested: https://www.greenbacktaxservices.com/blog/foreign-earned-inc...

You are correct. It's also quite easy to claim.

Yep! That’s one of the nuances I was referring too.

It gets trickier with investments and retirement funds (“foreign trusts”).

E.g. selling your own home in Canada doesn’t trigger capital gains, but it can on your US tax return.

As a recent immigrant (~6 weeks), with my family, I whole wholeheartedly agree to everything. IND is by far the most efficient and friendly government agency I've ever interacted with. They even have a small kids play area! This city is a shining example of what one can achieve if a city is built by keeping humans at the centre. More walking/cycling space, more greenery, etc.,

I've tried to describe it as a city that happens when you:

- Have an expectation that government is efficient and good at it's job and a strong push on cities to meet those goals - A focus on maximizing happiness/human instead of gdp/human.

The Dutch could definitely increase GDP 25% next year by requiring a 50 hour work week, but why would they when everyone's pretty happy at 38 hours/week? They're at #6 on the world happiness report (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report#2018_Wo...) and it makes sense.

I'm an American who moved to Amsterdam three years ago, with that DAFT visa. This is a fantastic society that's figured out so much — I love it.

Happy to answer questions and/or meet up with fellow HN readers here in town.

What was the DAFT process like? What type of business did you start? How often do you need to do reporting to maintain the DAFT visa?

An immigration attorney handled it for me, so it was relatively stress-free. Hardest part was getting the various documents (birth certificates apostiled). The reporting is just the annual accounting/taxes.

Thanks, can I ask how long the whole process took? It's also my understanding that you actually have a certain amount of money in a Dutch banking account as well correct?

I sent you an email!

Do they smoke as much as the Germans?

1400 cigarettes/year on average.

Germany is 1599.5/year, US is ~1016.6.

I wonder where those numbers come from.

I just spend 2 weeks in southern Germany, and it seems about 80% of the men there smoke, and at least 25% of the women. I couldn't go anywhere without running into clouds of smoke. Smokers were all over the place on city sidewalks, they blocked entrances to restaurants, they were everywhere. I was just glad they didn't seem to have any indoor smoking. It really sucks that Germany doesn't have the 50-foot rule we have in America (no smoking within a certain distance of the entrance to a public building), so non-smokers don't have to walk through clouds of smoke or right by smokers as they enter or exit public establishments.

By contrast, here in the US, I rarely see smokers. Of course, I'm a city dweller and live in a liberal city, but smokers are relatively rare here. I don't constantly get choked by smoke as I walk for miles around the streets of DC, the way I did in Munich. Also, I don't even see cigarettes for sale in the US anywhere except shitty gas stations and the like, whereas normal grocery stores in Germany had them for sale near the checkout, plus they even have outdoor vending machines where anyone (including children) can buy them! We banned those things ages ago in America to keep kids from getting hooked on them.

I suspect that in the US, the vast majority of those cigarettes are being smoked by poor people in more rural areas, especially in the South, and that's why I don't see it much. There's a huge and growing division in US society between the rural/conservative and urban/liberal people, and we're evolving into almost two different nations.

I haven't found the smoking to be overwhelming here, but I also don't super mind it. I've never been a smoker, but I was in the high school debate community in the US which is littered with smokers.

Is language a barrier in both personal and professional life ?

Are the Dutch pretty open to hiring foreigners (Americans)? Other than Booking.com?

I visited a few years back, originally scheduled for Barcelona, and was completely blown away by Amsterdam. I fell in love.

I think companies are generally. If you're in the > 65k euros salary bracket a blue card can be had for not too much trouble. We're open to doing it for exceptional people and we did it for 3 existing employees when we consolidated to Amsterdam.

I run an engineering team in Amsterdam and we mostly hire foreigners. The reason is simple, there are way more jobs than qualified people here.

Let me know if you ever want to grab a beer in Oost. :)

What stack/ roles?

Sr Software Eng, react + node, some legacy php.

How is life in Amsterdam for non-white engineers ? I am genuinely curious as I am considering a move from the US, but Europe has some history with brown folks. Is it possible to be fully integrated into the society and not stick out like a sore thumb ?

Within the big cities (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague) people are very tolerant and life is good. No matter your skin color, to fully integrate you do need to learn some Dutch. That being said, there are lots of expats living here and many welcoming communities to be a part of (without learning Dutch). I can only speak for my personal experiences of course.

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