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 :).