* Salaries and status of software engineers are low, you'd want to switch to management asap,
* There are very few interesting tech companies,
* Corruption and bureaucracy doesn't help with innovation and starting your own businesses.
* Social security/pension: if you work on IT in Italy, and have any degree but an Engineer one, you must pay 26% (and is planned to rise to 33%!) of your income to a pension public fund called "Gestione Separata": add to this your income tax and see how you say goodbye more then 50% of your money.
That pension fund is a total robbery since it is well known not to be sustainable, so just a miserable pension will come just from that fund. Even the director of the national pension institute (to which the fund belongs) once stated in the press: "I don't even understand why all subscribers to the fund 'Gestione Separata' are not protesting on the street!" (btw: subscribers are millions!).
Even more:
* the fund does not give you anything if you are sick: are you sick? you have to work and pay your pension (no concession!): yes, seriously!
* until 2 years ago that fund did not even give a woman any contribution at all for maternity (!)
Angry with their embarrassing political scenery, many Italians give up and, as they have been doing for centuries, go abroad: "voting with their own feet"
sources:
* https://www.informazionefiscale.it/gestione-separata-INPS-al...
* https://books.google.com.tr/books?id=ZrI_6jPOiWEC&pg=PA431&l...
The problem with taxes maybe is just:
* you never really know how much you have to pay: you cannot handle it by yourself (you need an private adviser)
Denmark has even higher taxes, but the country still works better than italy.
Calculating taxes is pretty easy in most countries, especially if you have to do it yourself (eg. independent contractors, etc.).
The only problem here is, that once one country fails (eg. they stop paying out pensions), all the other ones will go into full panic mode, and the shit will hit the fan.
in the UK the above amount to almost nothig: but then, of course you need your own pension scheme and health insurance.
yes, it is a lot, but the point here is not just the amount, but what you get: with the Italian "Gestione Separata" pension fund you just waste your money (and is 27% of your income !).
Here's the calculator: https://data.si/izracun-place/
In "01 Plača" in "Plača" enter the gross monthly amount, and at the right side ("03 Izračun", there's "Strošek izplačevalca" (what the employer pays all together), and "Neto plača" (net pay you get).
You have a salaried job. You set up a side gig after working hours. After business expenses, you pay: * (depending on the province) ~100€/year of flat rate provincial tax, regardless of income * 22% of independent contractor "solidary contribution", for which you get _literally_ nothing in return * if you have a somewhat decent paying main job, ~53.5% federal and local tax
No wonder so many people's side gigs here either go unreported or show zero profit...
Income tax and wealth tax are much more progressive, but they're also much harder to assess and collect.
To escape that you probably would have to go to north america. Advantages and disadvantages of course, but if you have a good education and nobody to care for, I can't see why you shouldn't go abroad.
In the UK the amount of money that you have to pay for your pension is almost nothing (of course you have nothing in exchange, as a pension, but you are free to choose your own pensione scheme, mainly private)
So, once again: if an Italian working on IT moves to the UK, he will save 27% of his income, and (most of all) does not feel to be abused. :)
For a £50k salary you are looking at 25% total tax rate.
Edit: and along the same lines, you need to add the "employer's contribution" to the total tax bill. In all NI works out to an additional 15% or so for someone on ~£100000. So that's about 55% in total.
Why the degree constraint?
There are some professions (among which Engineers and Architects) that have a separate (let's call them "guilds") pension and assistance fund, that is of a "private" nature and - generally speaking - better managed than public ones.
Traditionally the Engineers contributions (coming mainly from civil and mechanical engineers) were:
1)relatively high (since they had relatively high income) even if the percentage on income is lower (currently it is - I believe - 14.5%)
2)going on for a very long time, an engineer or architect used to work since the degree until well into their 70's or over
3) they had the (unfortunate but good for the fund) habit of dying shortly after retirement (or before retirement)
In recent years things changed:
1) the work (and thus the income and the contribution to the fund) has been more intermittent than before
2) many people are not (unlike before) entirely or mainly freelance, and when you are employed by a firm you pay a minimal annual fee to the guild, but the large part of pension/retirement funds go to the mentioned "Gestione Separata"
3) generally speaking contributions start later and people retir earlier (and live longer), and overall there was a flattening (to the bottom) in either rates of pay or amount of work, so income overall has lowered whilst expenditures have increased
The net effect is that until a few years ago the (medical) assistance was if not excellent very, very good and the retirement/pension monthly wage was relatively high, whilst in recent years everything has toned down a lot.
I wish we'd stop with these memes about how perfect Germany's work culture is.
Unless you work in a tech bubble or as a costly contractor, that statement is true for most of Europe, including Germany.
In my time working in wealthy southern Germany's top engineering companies, most of my colleagues were immigrants, usually from poorer countries while the managers were German without exception.
German culture values management (even poor quality one) way more as developers and engineers are seen as a plentiful resource that can easily be replaced, imported or outsourced if needed.
On a stint working for one of the TOP 3 German car makers I witnessed how they had to fire 3 sub par project managers before they could find a competent one, even thoug all the previous ones had impressive resumes.
In Germany you're not allowed to write negative things about the employee in a reference letter so all incompetent managers who had the luck to work at prestigious companies jump ship easily for big money to other prestigious organization once the shit hits the fan and no one's the wiser.
Reference letters have no value anymore other than proving you worked somewhere.
You can leetcode an engineer to weed out the fakers but you can't leetmanage a manager so the bad ones slip in much easier.
I do not like the state of German software industry and IT. Salary limits, preferring interns and juniors, lack of management and of organisational competence and culture in Berlin startups, avoidance of any risk, focusing on low risk boring stuff like web apps for fintech, adtech, travel, delivery, plain copy-pasting of businesses. So called flat structures in startups that are in fact just a mess. Founders who think they are new Steve Jobs, they do not listen to any advice and micromanage. There are a lot of problems, but there are a few good places and benefits as well.
My personal story is that I have 12+ years of experience, 5+ of them in leadership position with different ratio of tech / management. I still code and learn. A year ago I left a startup where I led engineering due to the reasons similar to what I mentioned above. I checked the market - I could not find or join anything interesting with a good impact and pay in Berlin. (I cannot relo for the next couple years - house, baby, etc.). I switched to contracting - now as a data tech lead for a large company. Good pay, no bullshit, I am not a part of management hierarchy, no strings attached, I can focus on doing my job. I hope to be able to land more contracts and eventually start my business - I have tech and management experience, but, unfortunately, no connections with domain specialists for good ideas.
Some of my friends left for US actually - for better pay and more technical job.