Of course, there's other stuff - 30 (working) days of paid vacation, solid and cheap education, solid medical coverage (I consider $50 medical bill damn high) etc.
I worked at FAANGs in Silicon Valley for many years. I always got at least 20 vacation days, 10-12 holidays (like Christmas or July 4th), excellent insurance plans and could pay off my 40-45K education loan in a breeze. Total cost of private education is ~25K per child.
If you have a Software job at a FAANG in SV, it will be better than almost any other arrangement in Europe (exception: Zurich) even after taking into account vacation days, insurance premiums, California taxes, private schools cost and probability of gun violence.
Unfortunately none of these are uniform across Europe. I only have 20 days of vacation, medical coverage is horrible, with 2-3 month waiting lists for even an MRI, and education is absolutely horrid.
I wouldn't even call them free, nor cheap: income taxes come out to about ~35%, and VAT is the highest in the world.
And to add on to that, achieving compensation above ~80k usd is basically impossible. With ~3 years of experience I barely get half of that at a Google L4 level equivalent.
How statistically common/likely is it for EU based engineers to move to the US on a L-1 visa, specifically at google?
Besides housing, healthcare, and maybe barbers, everything is either cheaper, or costs the same as it is in most of Europe.
One simply sees their paycheck cut by ~40% monthly and in case of crisis situation is always put at the end of the queue as a low priority applicant. That's ranging from irritating to infurating depending on the urgency of one's problems.
I guess that stops counting as Europe fairly soon, though.
Contractors always earn more than employees though don't they?