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Comment by tybris | Hacker News Reader

Also, high-tech industry is in a sad state in the Netherlands. Large IT projects fail at a remarkably high rate. Successful start-ups move out. Foreign tech corporations settle only for localization and catching a tax break. There is not much of an engineering culture. Salaries are generally low, venture capital non-existent. I moved abroad.

Ironically, Dutch engineering education is among the best of the world, but after college, there's nothing that keeps computer engineers like Dijkstra, van Renesse, Vogels, Kaashoek, Moolenaar and van Rossum at home.

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I would say salaries are good, comparing salaries and cost of living (comparing to London or Paris for example).

I also heard contrary statements to yours regarding venture capital (may not be at the level of the US though).

And, there are a bunch of technology companies (TomTom, booking.com, Hyves...).

Companies seem to have a hard time hiring locals though, and there are quite a lot of foreigners working in IT. So that seems to corroborate your point about Dutch going abroad (or maybe simply not interested in software)

Salaries are low in the Netherlands for IT people. I'm a Windows admin and also moved and went from pretax 34K euros in Amsterdam to $110K in California in 2006.Then add on top of that a sales tax and an income tax that are each roughly 10% lower in the US. Even if you compensate for lower benefits, cost of living differences and a possible increase of my value due to additional skills learned, there is a massive difference. I practically went from rags to riches just by moving (and also went from about 8 weeks vacation a year to... nothing :).

Sure, salaries are much higher in US, even more so in California. :-)

But, by european standards, it's pretty good. London and Paris are more expensive cities and salaries are lower (except maybe in finance).

I went from 31K in Toulouse (France) to 45K in Amsterdam 3 months later :-) Not really rags to riches but still a very nice increase, even adjusting to the higher cost of living.

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