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Comment by hugh | Hacker News Reader

Not to worry, there are still some good jobs in Europe.

Like, say, being a journalist for the Guardian. You can spend a week travelling around Europe, collect a few quotes from people who feel like whining about their financial situation, throw in a few fairly-meaningless numbers (Spain's government cut its growth forecast slightly!) and call it an article.

One interesting fact though: he had trouble finding a German with much to complain about. The best he could do was some guy on a perfectly reasonable salary of 2700 a month (about $US50K a year) in Berlin who admits his money is okay but isn't doing what he "dreamed" of doing. Yeah, you and everyone else with a degree in history and photography, buddy.

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Before moving to Silicon Valley 5 years ago, I grew up and worked in Italy and I confirm those numbers. The only employment available in Italy right now is basically temp contracting paid a fraction of the relative full time position, with no job security. These "precarious" employees are often Master's Degree holders forced to accept those shitty jobs because, well, they are the only one available -- either that or leave the country, as many do. It you're thinking "why don't those smart people start a business then?", suffice it to say the government makes it extremely complicated. There's a lot of bureaucracy involved that is a big deterrent for many.

It's a fairly standard theory (search for "Boom, Bust and Echo") that the generation after the baby boomers are hurt by demographics - compared to not just the generation before, but also the generation after, they suffer from lower salaries, less job prospects, and less satisfying careers overall. But as soon as they mentioned someone 24 years old - part of the "echo" generation who, in general, can expect the exact opposite - I decided they were just making shit up.

So, you've decided that generational phenomena are so exact that a difference of six years (30 vs 24) means that the reporter was lying?

Yeah, what all the replies to this miss is that history and photography was never a degree you would expect to earn much money with. Neither is architecture (another example mentioned in the article).

Also, New York is WAY more expensive than Berlin. I think I remember paying 10$ for two pounds of potatoes in NY (and that was years ago). A coffee at Starbucks was like 8$ - wtf???

In Finland, we actually have some shortage of skilled employees, especially in construction but also in tech. Even Microsoft and couple of other companies started a project to post educate 1000 applied science graduates and agreed to offer jobs for them.

In tech, entry level salaries are about $37-50k, senior positions from $55k>. Country average salary is about 37k. Of course that isn't the whole story. Cost of living is and taxation is very high. Just recently there was a article stating that apartment in Helsinki is more expensive than apartment from Manhattan.

It seems to vary by country; this is an example of what the article was talking about: http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSL295116342...

Where in Germany? $50k/yr in San Francisco or New York metro is what McDonalds store managers make.

Berlin, which is actually one of the cheaper cities in Germany (at least it was two years ago when I was looking at moving there).

It's still not great money, but it's hardly terrible.

Can't speak for Berlin, but I was just in a few different smaller towns in Germany, and prices for most things were (in Euros) about equivalent to what they are in USD. My friends who live in Cologne confirmed my observation. For example, my friend was paying about 1300 Euros for an apartment that would probably go for about 1300 USD where I live. Shoes were roughly 100 Euro per pair, Bread was 3-5 Euro for a loaf, etc.

Assuming that the greater social services in Germany are largely offset by their significantly higher tax rates, someone with a 32k Euro job is getting by, but not likely saving very much...unless they're somehow buying everything they need in the US (and hence at a 60% discount, thanks to the exchange rate).

I'm not sure I understand: if your friend pays 1300EU for an apartment that goes for 1300USD, he's paying 150% of what you pay.

If he earned in USD, and paid in Euros, or vice-versa, then yes. But he's European, so he earns in Euros and pays in Euros. The exchange rate between the currencies isn't relevant.

Point is, 1 Euro appears to have about the same relative earning power (in Germany) as 1 USD has in the US (where I live, anyway). The comparison isn't perfect, but it's good enough to be able to make an estimate of lifestyle, based on salary in whichever currency. EU citizens aren't all magically richer than US citizens because they earn in Euros.

I might be totally wrong (and if I am, I apologize!) but I sense you're implying $50k is low because it's what a mere McDonald's manager makes?

If so, McDonald's outlet managers might not seem culturally important or as well qualified as historians, architects, and the like, but in terms of raw capitalism, they provide a lot more value and have control over a real cash cow and provider to the economy. This is why their salaries are pretty good compared to the minions below them.

$50k/yr is a good salary on almost any part of the planet. It's the median personal salary in the United Kingdom, for instance.

"On Friday night, Lorenzo, 35, was on a train heading to work a nightshift for a major American sales website's Berlin branch."

This part of the article is pretty useless, it doesn't actually tell us what his job is. It sounds like it's not related to his qualifications as a historian/photographer (whatever they are, again there are no details), in which case you would expect his pay to be lower than if he had relevant skills.

On the other hand, if it's a white-collar job, he's working nights regularly, and only getting the $50,000 salary, this would be low pay.

Teachers provide vast amounts of value, but supply greatly exceeds demand, and therefore they make less than people with far less relevant jobs.

Well, boo-urns for Frisco. I would say that in most of Germany 50K would be enough.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

  GDP - per capita (PPP):  $34,400 (2007 est.)

GDP per capita has very little to do with the average income of the individuals in a country.

GDP per capita overstates the average income (because it's skewed by high income earners), which only reinforces mynameishere's point that 50k is a decent wage in Germany.

As you suspect, we get a similar picture when looking at that in conjunction with the Gini coefficient and median income (and normalizing everything with PPP).

For example, Germany has an extremely low Gini of 28.3 (compare to the US at 47), and a relatively low median income of ~ $25K. This suggests that people are, uniformly, relatively poor (compared to counties like the US and UK).

So, yes. $50K there would be pretty good.

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