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Comment by peteretep | Hacker News Reader

> The U.S. is the favored country

EU needs to up its game on this. It's a travesty we haven't managed to lure these people to the EU reliably yet.

Until you improve on the pitiful salaries offered in Europe's tech industry, that's not going to change.

Eh, some people will be tempted, knowing that their children will get a decent education that doesn't cost the world, healthcare, gun violence, etc. But you're right, we'll likely never convince the people who have never experienced another culture and who value money over everything. Edit: Even if we did pay more, the language barrier is still pretty high.

The cost of college I'll give you that. Pretty much very tech company gives employees and their family healthcare coverage as part of the benefits. As for gun violence, while the US definitely has higher rates of mass shootings, the vast majority of Americans will never experience any of that first hand, especially in high income tech cities like SF and NYC.

Even with (overpriced) health insurance in the US, health costs are ridiculously expensive when compared to Europe or other countries with functioning public healthcare.

Even people in the richer end of the middle-class bracket have issues. It's just that healthcare isn't a pressing concern for most people's decision making, until it's an emergency.

The above list makes sense for people outside of tech. People in tech have most of the above in US. Some countries in Europe have pretty competitive comp like Switzerland (Denmark, Norway have decent comp too but its getting destroyed by high taxes)

Curious about the comment on Norway taxes. They are high but the benefits offered are very good for citizens. Education and healthcare being top benefits. Also the culture contributes a lot to viewing it more positively from what I understand.

I don't work in Norway but I've been researching it as a possible location to migrate to in the future. Curious if there are any citizens from Norway who'd be interested in adding information to this though.

I think the situation is very skewed when comparing tech sector because of how competitive things are in US the comp packages can be far beyond of what you get as "free" gov. services in a place like Norway.

I look at remote job ads and I find the US, Canada at times the UK willing to hire internationally. Where Denmark, Norway, Germany seem hostile to non-locals.

To me those are key signals of a competitive market. It doesn't feel like Europe has a shortage of talent at the moment.

It sure does work culture is different though plus cost savings US vs Remote can be 2X vs for Germany more like 30%

sure, it's a complex situation, and IT is booming, so the "high salary + throw money at it" approach works great for individuals

> we'll likely never convince the people who have never experienced another culture and who value money over everything

You certainly won't convince many people currently living the USA by throwing veiled insults at them for not considering moving somewhere else, that's for sure.

With Article 13, GDPR, VATMOSS and other things I heard complained about from small businesses, I wouldn't want to start a company in the EU. At most I would hire employees there to work remotely.

Meh. GDPR involves not being a dick with other people’s data, and don’t Americans have to deal with inter-state tax as well?

In the UK I can setup a new legal company in an hour online, and have access to top notch banking from across Europe almost immediately.

I see you haven't actually tried to do VATMOSS or GDPR compliance. It might be easy to register a corp, but you're walking into a liability minefield unless you do it right, which will be a few staff worth of people, or hope you're ignored & small enough to never be enforced upon.

And in the USA, you only pay sales tax for customers inside your state, unless you have something called a 'nexus' within the other states, which is simpler to avoid by staying put in a single state.

VATMOSS has a threshold before it kicks in now, as of 2019, so it should be a lot less of a hassle for the just-starting business.

These people tend to be young and without children - the demographic that is ok living (temporarily) without free healthcare, childcare and education.

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