Can you elaborate on "Europe dug it's own grave here"?
A friend finished his PhD in ML and ended up taking a job at a FAANG in the EU as the tech companies from Germany and France were only willing to pay half of that.
You can't be at the top if you treat your SW devs and researchers as an IT cost center.
It becomes an equivalence:
* Since you decide nothing, therefore your salary is low.
* Since your salary is low, you therefore decide nothing.
This stems fundamentally from a (backward?) European strict view of companies, regardless of how hierarchical/flat their structure may be. And that view is that the corporate environment is split into two groups:
* Managers: they decide;
* Workers: they do work.
This split may have made sense in the Industrial Revolution era but it has shown it's age in this day and age. And yet the model (and the perception, and the values) persist.
If you, as a knowledge worker, ever make the mistake of "getting down and get things done" you will have chosen your side.
It's funny that you completely missed the point ( i think the other person is making). What about time off? Pension? Parental leave? Medical costs? Way of life ( as in, work stops at 6pm or 7pm or whatever, and then it's your free time; weekends are usually off limits; you don't have to own a car and waste hours in traffic depending on where you live, etc.)
Furthermore, the rest of what you said is painting hundreds of thousands of business across more than 30 countries with the same brush. I work in a European company, and it's nothing like that. You shouldn't generalise like that.
For top engineers, that's not really a concern in America.
art and education is a good example of this. without either, a society is reduced to nothing. why do these not deserve proper healthcare? because the free market has decided they are not worth it?
All of the above are codified in law.
Whenever a (large) company has their own internal programs (for higher pension, additional coverage) the values are proportional to your income.
This "makes sense" given the separation of concerns: one dept appraises your performance and indicates salary adjustments. Another dept is responsible for providing additional benefits/perks to all employees (based on their salaries). Each dept gets to focus on their core competence.
> What about time off?
Much more flexibility (in terms of work schedule, work load, commitment) is afforded to those above than those whose work is depended on. Whenever managers travel around the world for worldwide management conferences in e.g. Thailand they can spend their vacation days there (i.e. the company is flexible with the bookings).
This "makes sense" because it is far easier to be flexible towards those whose work is on the move and abstract, as opposed to work done exclusively in a fixed location (eg factory worker). Knowledge workers are in a weird spot (because their work is super abstract but done from a cubicle/home) but have been lumped into the latter category because "they aren't managers".
> I work in a European company
Me too. I have (physically) worked in DE, PL, PT. And have worked for even more countries -- and I stand by my generalization. The exception to the rule will be small companies, but organizational culture in those will always be different due to the lack of size.
Moreover, the bigger the company the more extreme that equivalence is.
Now onto specifics that I have observed over my 20+ years:
> Way of life
Oh yes, I love being micro-managed by a manager with PhD with 2 years of "work" experience.
> weekends are usually off limits
Except when managers make commitments without bothering to check what the actual effort is (because it was in their personal interest to say yes to things), ultimately putting you into a lovely position. Say no and be punished during your appraisal, say yes and work weekends.
> you don't have to own a car and waste hours in traffic depending on where you live
Managers received that perk long before knowledge workers did.
Even if you already work for a US company, and that company is willing to sponsor you, and you win the visa lottery, it can take years to move to the US, and many years after that to get a green card. And at any point something could go wrong, your company screws up paperwork or something, and you get sent back to the start.
Maybe some EU countries should look into getting a better deals for their citizen trying to go abroad.
also, the US has a political and social problem which make it a place I would not want to live.
Plus I like being (or ok, feeling) productive, instead of spending 99% of my time on politics, analysis and waiting for small code changes.
There's also SRE, which has a slightly different twang on how we spend our time and then interview makeup.
For what it's worth, I'm not a computer science grad at all and I'm doing just fine at Google. Got hired as a senior manager, though, so YMMV.
Not trying to convince you of anything, just trying to be helpful. :)
Obligatory article: https://alexdanco.com/2021/01/11/why-the-canadian-tech-scene...
It’s about what the business owners are willing to do.
Honestly, bragging your engineers are worth 50K less while pitching for HQ2 won't stop their brain drain.