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Comment by sidlls | Hacker News Reader

On average the best paying and most technically interesting ones are.

> most technically interesting

Like making six figures a year for screwing people over at Facebook?

Sorry for being snarky, but lots of jobs in IT businesses in the US tend to be somewhat unhelpful for the society at all and not really providing any benefit in the long term.

In regard of this I'm always somewhat "happy" that we fail in Europe with building "the next Google", "the next Facebook" or whatever.

Europe has absolutely no innovation culture and tons of problems retaining founders. Anecdotally, I've found the bar for European engineers in Europe compared to American engineers an order of magnitude lower.

You do realize that the top paying employers in the EU aren't "the next Google" or "the next Facebook" they are actual Google and actual Facebook. In fact, the top tech employers in the EU by average annual compensation is literally a list of US tech companies and SAP.

So you're correct, the EU has failed in building the next Google and Facebook, because the majority of top-tier EU CS grads already work for them.

You must come from a well off background to afford the luxury of morality when choosing jobs.

While you might be happy Europe has no six figure SW jobs, I, not being able afford a decent house in a decent area to raise a family on your average Austrian SW dev salary, am not, and would gladly take a FAANG job any day regardless of how morally questionable it may seem from your McMansion.

My family's well being comes first.

You haven't got the slightest idea of my background but rest assured it's rather the opposite of "well off", coming from a small village in the middle of literally nowhere in Germany.

Maybe because of that we're holding values and standards like "do no evil" high, because there are more important things than money.

I can't afford a house in a decent area either, but I'm pretty sure I won't fuck up lives with my job. And I'm still making enough money to support my family and keep everything going.

How will working for FAANG fuck up people's lives?

If we somehow end up in a dystopian nightmare, I'm 99% certain it will be (at least in part) because of one of those 5 companies.

Don't make assumptions about people's lives.

I'm far from rich and am on a not-even-competetive UK dev salary. I still and pick and choose which companies to work for based on whether they align with my personal principles. It's not like there's only one company to work for.

Most people in the world don’t live in houses, you can just as well raise a family in a flat (which are usually much cheaper).

Well, I didn't assign any moral value to the work. On that subject, it is a rare employer that doesn't engage in morally questionable activity, in my experience.

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