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Comment by nivenkos | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, in Europe your only real options are moving to the US, working remotely in a cheaper location in Europe (perhaps even as a contractor to the US), or working for a company/country with a better work balance and just fitting your life around work. I've done the latter two and it's worked out okay, but I still don't own a home even after 7 years working (and some of that for FAANG).

But I think Americans really don't understand how different Europe is. Programming is barely a white-collar job here vs. Law or Real Estate, etc. and the quality of life is just lower (less car ownership, much smaller homes without swimming pools or air conditioning, tiny kitchens without garbage disposal, American fridge-freezers or dishwashers, etc.)

The Tech Bro memes don't apply here.

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I live in Sweden, the west coast. A friend is from the UK and he described my town as a paradise compared to London.

The ocean is like 10-30 minutes away. The coast line is incredible and free for all to enjoy.

He describes his work in London as strict dress code. 1+h sweaty and crowdy train+metro rides(and the same to get home). Long work days.

Dressing is casual. Work is probably <30 mins by car(I have 15 mins single-way, car and bike take similar times). I even have coworkers who jog to work a few times a week. Showers and sauna are available at work. Work hours are flexible.

He said good food is cheap here. There are excellent restaurants that cost much less than similar ones in London.

Since mid-March, I've been taking 2-3h lunches on the cliffs by the ocean if it's a sunny day. Just laying there listening to the nature. Takes 20 minutes door to ocean for me.

For me this is a high quality of life. How can you put a price on things like this, especially when you(stereotypical US IT worker) have little to no paid vacation, work 8-12h a day, sometimes even on the weekends?

I think like with everything, it depends on where you live in the country. Another commenter mentioned no car, because living in Stockholm, where I'm sure the price of housing has skyrocketed up as well.

Same thing in London, big urban center. But if you are able to move out into the country, quality of life can improve markedly, especially if you earn the same as you do / can in London.

Same in NL where I live. I'm relatively lucky in that I got a smallish modernish two bedroom house with a driveway, small back yard, etc, but most people can't afford this (hell, housing prices have gone up so much that even I can't afford this house anymore if I were to buy it now!) even if it becomes available on the market.

Meanwhile, my parents live up north, bought a house in the 70's while mortgage rates were >10%, a four bedroom house with a big front- and back yard, which they've turned into their own little paradise (lots of plants, fish pond, roofed sitting area with a box of sigars, etc).

Long term we might end up moving there, but besides our son's school and social life, the biggest factor there is work and income. It may be more feasible with remote work which I've done for the past year and a half now, but not in the current market where every somewhat decent house put up for sale gets hundreds of interested people.

Yeah, I also live in Sweden now :) being able to walk everywhere, take a proper break at lunch is really nice

I can't afford a car here though (no parking in Stockholm!)

> you(stereotypical US IT worker) have little to no paid vacation, work 8-12h a day, sometimes even on the weekends?

Oddly defensive considering that a) nobody in the thread seems to be american and b) none of those things apply to your average google employee (the original subject that was being discussed)

As an american, I'm curious how much PTO you guys get. Personally I get 10 vacation days per year and accrue 8 hours PTO per pay period. This ends up being about 34 paid vacation days per year.

Perhaps this is a uniquely american problem, but I doubt very many people at my company actually uses their 30+ vacation days.

> Perhaps this is a uniquely american problem, but I doubt very many people at my company actually uses their 30+ vacation days.

That's actually the American problem. For the bunch of European countries where I've worked/interacted a lot with, most people don't have days off left at the end of the year, or maybe have a handful.

And there are some periods when people are gone for long stretches of time (2+ weeks). In France August is practically a national holiday, it's super common to send someone an email in late July and get a reply saying: "I'll be back in early September".

From what I've seen from my US colleagues, they usually take a peppering of 1-2-3 days or maybe a week at most, and if they do have a ton of days off, I can't imagine they use them up.

In Romania I had a case where I had some PTO days saved and I went away on December 20 or so and came back on February 3 (got a bit lucky that year with public holidays, but still).

Statutory annual leave entitlement in the UK is 28 days pa by law. That’s the minimum that everybody working full time gets, regardless of the industry/role.

Last two tech companies I’ve worked at offer unlimited vacation. Which is a funny problem so to speak, as some of my colleagues make a good use of it and others don’t. I’ve used 36 days in 2020, mostly because there was a big push from the HR to make sure people take regular long breaks at least once per quarter (I’ve used only 21 in 2019).

Everybody also gets unlimited paid sick days. At my current company 3+ days require a proof from the Doc, otherwise no questions asked.

There’s also 8 days of bank holidays pa in the UK. These don’t have to be given as paid leave, but I’ve never heard of anyone in an office job to ever work on a bank holiday (unless they wanted to swap)

In the UK PTO is usually between 25-27 days. This doesn't include bank holidays.

Yes, but also it is not uncommon (I think) for companies to allow you to buy extra holiday. So, for example, my company allows you to buy an extra week, which I always do.

I've worked in France and Spain in a large company, and we had about 40 days off per year (plus national holidays). I've always seen everyone take all their holidays.

Swede here. I have a fairly standard Swedish industry vacation. 5 weeks plus ~1.5 week of hours I can take part of days. In addition to that there are also other holidays which I'm not working and doesn't count towards my vacation days.

I usually take 4 weeks in July. Then vacation/time off just before Christmas until a week after New Year.

I have friends who instead of increased salary have asked for more vacation weeks, and have now 7 weeks of vacation. And they use it every year.

In the US, I get something similar. I have basically never not used pretty much every hour I'm entitled to.

> Programming is barely a white-collar job here vs. Law or Medicine

Programmers routinely earn more than most doctors and healthcare professionals. Also, being "white-collar" is not about having the highest compensation.

Obviously, private practices, big law firms allow for extremely well paid Law and Medicine jobs. But so do big software corporations.

> the quality of life is just lower (less car ownership

I enjoy renting out a car for trips to unusual locations (places not well served by trains), but I argue that a society with less car ownership is actually a more pleasant one to live in

> much smaller homes without swimming pools

Fair, but is that really common for those who live/commute to work into New York every day?

> or air conditioning

You can just install it, it's much more common nowadays than 30 years ago (obviously, more common in the south, and more common when you actually own the property, instead of renting)

> kitchens without garbage disposal, American fridge-freezers or dishwashers,

indeed, never saw a garbage disposal unit. Besides some banana peels I barely produce any organic waste in my kitchen, though. I think I'd bin it in the same "nice marginal improvement" category as robo toilets in Japan.

> American fridge-freezers or dishwashers

You can just buy them. These kind of items are a small fraction of the cost of a home. If you can afford a home, you can also afford these.

> Programmers routinely earn more than most doctors and healthcare professionals.

Just curious, in which European country do programmers earn more than most doctors? I'm from Germany and doctors here easily earn 6 figures, something virtually impossible for a programmer or SWE.

In the UK, software engineers outearn doctors. Doctors used to have trouble securing work visas when there was a limit on the number of visas issued. When the limit is hit, the applicants will be prioritised according to the number of 'points'. Higher salaries command higher points.

https://workpermit.com/news/uk-tier-2-visa-cap-exemption-doc... https://www.imgconnect.co.uk/news/2021/04/nhs-doctors-pay-sc...

But the issue is when you can't afford a home. Here in Sweden the average price for a flat is like 400k euros.

And then those are usually in a shared building so you can't "just" install air conditioning even then.

The housing crisis is the real issue for sure.

The UK, Ireland and loads of other places are having housing affordability issues. It's quite serious, but nobody wants property prices to fall.

Investment funds are buying up new housing estates by outbidding normal buyers. Even John Lewis, a retailer, is getting into the housing business [0]. The whole system is broken. Personally, I'm half-seriously considering buying a boat.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57712618

I have understood that Swedish housing is a specially bad case, or at least in Finland we like to tell unbelievable horror stories of Swedish housing (Stockholm rent-controlled apartment market where one either waits on queue for years, except if you know the right people; if you are not renting, deal with housing mortgages that are structured so that you will never pay them back in full during your lifetime).

(edit. Main point, Sweden is not necessarily a representative case of "Europe".)

Housing is indeed getting quite expensive, but on an engineer's salary you are in the few lucky ones that are easily able to pay off that 400k€ before your 40s (maybe your 50s at most).

> less car ownership, much smaller homes without swimming pools or air conditioning, tiny kitchens without garbage disposal, American fridge-freezers or dishwashers

I’m not sure I’d conflate less material goods with lesser quality of life.

I think the quality of life is objectively better in most of (western) Europe. Maybe for software engineers in specific it’s worse.

> I’m not sure I’d conflate less material goods with lesser quality of life.

He's not conflating fewer material goods with lower quality of life.

He's conflating lack of things which provide life experiences with lower quality of life.

Not having AC absolutely sucks when the weather's over 30. Not having a house with a backyard and a swimming pool means you can't have people over for a pool party (experience, not material good). Etc.

I'm with you on AC, but not the pool. That's an expensive, time-consuming luxury. (Or even more expensive, if you pay someone else to maintain it.) The occasional pool-party could be had elsewhere (community pool? neighbor's pool?), or even at the beach instead.

If you kept on that line of logic, a PlayStation 5 and an espresso machine are also "not material goods" and are ways to create experiences, and I can't actually tell where that line of thought stops.

A Playstation 5 and an espresso machine I wouldn't consider "material goods" in the classic sense. For PS5 it's kind of obvious why, since it competes with cinemas.

For the espresso machine, it's an "experience machine" if you're a espresso aficionado. If you're getting it to show off and barely use it, it's a "material good".

I'd draw the line like this: if it makes you personally feel good many times, through your interaction with the thing, it's worth buying. If it's just/primarily to show off, then it's a "material good". Unless you have some sort of personality disorder where you feel good by showing your stuff off repeatedly to acquaintances.

> Not having AC absolutely sucks when the weather's over 30

Only if you are used to air conditioning. Otherwise it’s just a hot day.

Not having a pool means you do a barbeque party instead. Not that you have no party at all.

Western Europe has a mild climate. Aircon is only required for < 7 days a year and those days are still tolerable without aircon if there's proper insulation.

I just want to point out that quality of life is subjective and depends on what you value. For example I, subjectively, do not want some of the things you mention, like big home with pool... and my kitchen seems big enough to me. I consider NOT having to own a car a good thing (appreciating that our public transportation seems incomparably better than what I have seen in the US) and I value 5 weeks of paid vacation, health insurance for all, free college education... stuff like that. And how are our dishwashers and fridges different that the American ones?

Europe is different than US for many reasons. In some things it might be because we failed to achieve what Americans did. In other things it's just because we prefer it that way.

I saw a great quote recently (perhaps on HN?):

"A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation."

-- Gustavo Petro

This is, for me, very true. I lived in the US and would not say that having to own a car and drive everywhere is desirable. Vast areas of land are given over to cars — roads, parking lots, etc, to the degree that walking is discouraged or even impossible (no sidewalks, 4-8 lane roads). The air is smoggy. The act of driving itself is not enjoyable — traffic is awful (hi 101) and cities are a stop/start grind. It's miserable.

Another bad thing about cars these days is that many people think they can talk on the phone and/or text while driving. I was in a pretty bad wreck last week - slammed into at an intersection. Because I had a 2003 Accord in excellent condition with 90K miles that I planned to drive for another 10 years, I get totally screwed on insurance and will be lucky to get $6K for it. Buying a used 2018 replacement with 30K miles was $30K, so compared to leaving $24K invested, I'll end up being out around $48K because of someone else's bad driving. (And no, you can't drive well while using a phone "hands free"; it's the lack of mental focus that is the problem, not using your hands.)

Of course, if I had been walking instead, this bad driver would have likely taken me out.

> The air is smoggy

In most of the US this is not true. Air quality in Europe is significantly worse than in the US, in general. This is form my anecdotal experience, but you can also see it in online sources

https://nimonik.com/2018/05/air-quality-in-europe-vs-the-uni...

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/12/science/who-says-europe-t...

Check similar sized cities on the map: https://waqi.info/

We have to thank Europeans' genius idea to subsidize/force diesel engines on people's cars. Each diesel car pollutes as much as a bus, and half of cars are diesel! We saves 0.001 of CO2 emissions for the next decades, but we got pollution and cancer and deaths instead.

> And how are our dishwashers and fridges different that the American ones?

While they're certainly available in Europe, side-by-side fridge-freezers (as opposed to fridge-over-freezer models) are more popular in the US. I don't get the appeal personally, but in any case, both configurations are available in both places.

I think it's because it's much harder to shop for groceries in the US. I mean: in Europe you have a small grocery store around the corner, in the US, with single-use zoning, your closest grocery store is probably 3 miles away. So, in Europe you shop more often, in small quantities, in the US you stock your fridge with 2-3 weeks worth of food, just to avoid the hassle.

Not my experience. Canada here but still. You do see these fridges. Have a few friends that have them. I think it's more the 'prestige', marketing and "bling"-ness. "Best" with integrated ice maker and cooled water dispenser.

Personally I don't get it. We have a standard freezer on top fridge, though the size is definitely bigger than what I'm used to from Europe and we have a chest freezer in the garage. That's not uncommon for families in Europe either tho. More of a flat vs house living situation thing.

As a student (living in a flat in Europe) I always joked that I'd go to the 'basement' to my freezer when I wanted a Pizza. I didn't have a basement actually but the parking garage, which was basically shared with (tho sectioned off) a supermarket's parking garage and the supermarket.

I mean, this makes a sort of sense, but on the other hand, I've seen the side-by-side type in San Francisco, where there are supermarkets all over the place. And I don't think they're actually dramatically higher capacity, anyway. I think this one is largely down to cultural preference.

It's completely possible to live and retire early comfortably as an engineer in Europe. On a salary of 40k in the UK outside of London/oxford, (which is achievable as a mid level dev pretty much anywhere there are developer jobs), you'll live a pretty comfortable lifestyle.

> the quality of life is just lower (less car ownership, much smaller homes without swimming pools or air conditioning, tiny kitchens without garbage disposal, American fridge-freezers or dishwashers, etc.)

All of those things are why I actively choose to live in Europe over the US.

Having an american fridge freezer, a pool and 2 cars wouldn't increase my quality of life, but sacrificing access to quality healthcare, reasonable rights of not being abused by my employer, neighborhoods designed to be walked around, not driven, etc all _would_ dramatically reduce my qol

Related to quality of life, I'll take cycling to work in a Nordic country over an American life with two cars and a huge dishwasher.

It sucks when you need to buy / move furniture though.

I really miss that side of the freedom in the US. It's also much easier to drive in the US due to the huge, straight roads.

> It sucks when you need to buy / move furniture though.

But isn't that an extremely rare event?

Maybe you move more than anyone I've ever known but I don't see how something so minor could meaningfully affect quality of life.

Yeah, this was always such a weird complaint. I'm sure that there are moving companies which will do that for you, or you can probably rent some truck and do it yourself if wanted.

I don't own a car but where I live (Gothenburg, Sweden), you can rent a car easy with an app: https://m.co/se/en-US/

> Yeah, in Europe your only real options are moving to the US

This sounds overly dramatic. And I feel the urge to express that this isn't my picture of working as a SWE in the EU at all. Nor was it at any point in a very turbulent ~20 years career in tech and with many companies. Quite the contrary.

Perhaps it depends where exactly you're situated. And of course companies with low standards can be found – but that's probably true for both sides of the Atlantic.

> and the quality of life is just lower (less car ownership, much smaller homes without swimming pools or air conditioning, tiny kitchens without garbage disposal, American fridge-freezers or dishwashers, etc.)

This made my day. You sir have your priorities in order.

> but I still don't own a home even after 7 years working (and some of that for FAANG).

Even at the inflated SV salary values, very few colleagues I know went to buy a house there. Buying usually means leaving the valley.

> quality of life is just lower (less car ownership, much smaller homes without swimming pools or air conditioning, tiny kitchens without garbage disposal, American fridge-freezers or dishwashers, etc.)

I don't see why half of those necessarily mean "lower quality of life"

A car in the US is a necessity. Same for the fridge-freezer where you keep your big perishable purchases (whereas in European cities you can just walk to the grocery store?). And of course, none of these are exclusive to the US

I totally agree with the air-conditioners, though it seems to be changing. Swimming pools are a money pit and to be fair only in few countries it's worth having one at your house.

I live in Scotland, it peaks at 20c/68f here, but with >70% humidity, and even at that it's not often it gets that hot. AC is a nice to have on occasion, but definitely not life changing. London on the other hand, sounds liky it's almost a requirement there at this point

> London on the other hand, sounds liky it's almost a requirement there at this point

I live in Lisbon. Most people don't have AC at home, we survive.

There's elements of what the housing is designed for too. I'm not sure what the common building materials are there but many houses in the UK are built of brick and not designed for airflow at all. Parts of London hit 38 degrees at one point last year.

Lisbon is right at the Atlantic coast. Do the summers get that hot there? Inland places get more extreme weather, both cold and hot.

Fun fact, according to Windy[0], Lisbon has 21°C right now, while eg Murmansk has 29°C.

[0]: https://www.windy.com/-Temperature-temp

You need a bedside fan for a few days a year, that's about it.

I would prefer a sauna to a swimming pool any day. :)

There are definitely places in the US where a car is not necessary. Lived on the east coast my whole life without learning to drive.

I don't own a car because I inhabit a walkable, dense city instead of enormous urban sprawl, not because I'm destitute.

> Programming is barely a white-collar job here vs. Law or Real Estate, etc.

Hmm, not sure where you are (Europe is a big place). In Ireland, programmers would, I think, earn more on average than lawyers, and certainly than estate agents.

> less car ownership

I wouldn't consider that to be inherently a quality of life issue. I don't own a car because I don't really have a use for one. If I did have a use for one, that would imply a long driving commute, which would likely make my quality of life worse.

> tiny kitchens without garbage disposal

Easily available, they cost about 200 euro. Though you risk the wrath of Dublin City Council by installing one here; they create undue load on wastewater treatment (I believe this is also the case in some US cities, actually). Never understood the appeal, tbh.

> American fridge-freezers

From about 500 euro in my local electrics shop. Again, never understood the appeal vs the conventional fridge-over-freezer designs, but they're there if you want them.

> dishwashers

From about 200 euro ditto. Wouldn't be without one.

Again, Europe's a big place.

What a truly strange comment lol

I've lived in both the US and the EU, I'll take the EU 11 times out of 10, even if it means I'll lack the crucial aspect of owning... Garbage disposal systems?

Less cars is also a good thing

You can get hired by a Silicon Valley company that have a presence in Europe.

You won't get a salary as high as Silicon Valley itself but it will still be much higher that other companies, and the work will be pretty similar.

However I think you're mistaken about quality of life between US and Europe (I've lived in both) or it really depends what country you're talking about.

First of all you're talking about standard of living - and it's not lower at least in western Europe (Germany, France, UK, etc...) It's similar to US. Regarding quality of life, I'd argue that it's higher in Europe because of health care, better work balance, better town planning, etc.

You're talking about car ownership like it's an indicator of quality of life, on the contrary we have a single car in my family even though we can definitely afford a second car and I couldn't be more happy to be able to live without taking my car for every single trip.

Yeah, remote work for US companies for US non-geocoded salary is the way to go for Europeans. Imagine getting 900k TC as an E7 at FB Menlo Park vs 233GBP TC (150k base) as an E7 at FB London, with approximately the same living expenses.

There is a bunch of US companies that do that and EU devs can get 200-400k while working from some <1500 EUR monthly expenses place in Europe. Not sure who would care about EU/UK/CH-based FAANGs with the salaries they offer in the EU.

Which companies are examples of this? I know Gitlab is remote but changes based on location and ends up not being that good in somewhere like Dublin

It's tricky to find without networking; get yourself into a-team or a similar remote-friendly contractor agency first for 100-400/hour (interviews might be comparable to FAANG level of difficulty) and then network from there.

I live in Portugal and I can't think of any job that can give you better quality of life (without family/party/etc connections) than software development.

I have friends leaving other jobs, that they spent years in university for, and have some years of experience in, for an entry-level frontend development job that pays double after a few months bootcamp.

Maybe you can't get filthy rich as easily, but I don't see that as a bad thing, my life is comfortable and I'm better off at 26 than almost anyone I know in other jobs, even people much older than me.

Sure, if you're a doctor or a lawyer you might be paid a bit more than a dev, but with much more hours per week, a very stressful work environment, and less respect. It's also much harder to quit and switch companies if you don't like what you're doing.

Less respect as a doctor or lawyer compared to a dev? Really?

> Programming is barely a white-collar job here vs. Law or Real Estate, etc

Hardly - programming is very much a white-collar job. It's just that white-collar work in the UK doesn't pay all that much compared to the rewards of capital ownership or being able to dip a finger in the money hose that flows through the financial markets. Seriously, check what chartered professionals are actually paid, and for what hours.

My favourite example is that the Prime Minister was paid more as a Telegraph columnist than his official PM salary: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/oct/03/daily-teleg... ; the current PM salary is £161,401 or about $225,000. How does that compare to SV pay grades?

Programmer pay looks a lot more like that of footballers. The prizes are distributed towards the top. The programmers who enable companies to take over the world - monopolize entire markets - get bid up; everyone else is on far more normal pay. Lionel Messi is paid $130,000,000 to dominate the world. https://www.sportsadda.com/football/news/highest-paid-athlet...

Simple: move to New York, get tech job, rent and live frugally for a decade, save everything and go back to your country. You've effectively drained a fraction of the US economy to enrich your own country's, nothing wrong with that.

Also new York is fun, even when frugal. Even with kids I'd wager it's a great experience to have in ones life. Staying in the same house or city all your life is overrated.

Depends on what you like. I lived in NYC briefly--albeit at a time when it was almost certainly seedier than it is today. I was really ready to get out. I do like visiting but a little NYC goes a long way for me.

Also, what is special about American fridge-freezers or dishwashers?

Garbage disposal unit sounds like a questionable idea (more unnecessary things in waste water for the water treatment plant to sort out), and not compatible with the dominant paradigm here where we assume everyone sorts and recycles their biowaste, metals, glass, paper, plastic, and cardboard. For the small things now and then one does not intentionally throw into kitchen sink, I'd figure GBU is unnecessary if you have good plumbing in the first place. (I am soon 30-y.o., I have never encountered a plumbing problem anywhere I live.) Old houses built in 1960s / 1970s used to have garbage chutes, but I think they were deemed unhygienic?

Before the recent hot summers, air conditioning was not often needed except for handful of days in a year, but in our climate things that are needed, like three-layer glass windows, central heating, apartments without draft or cold but with uninterrupted hot water have been around for ages.

Quality of life is lower due to less car ownership? Seems counterintuitive in several ways. One being less car ownership should mean less traffic. A bigger one might be societies not built around cars, i.e. more pedestrian and bike friendly, less area occupied by parking lots, better public transport, etc.

The location matters in both, tbh. California's average is much higher than anywhere else it seems. And I can guess where the highest salaries are in the state. Texas seems to have the second highest average.

But yeah, the average is higher than the highest paid positions in Europe, except maybe the top of the top senior ones.

> American fridge-freezers

Do Europeans not have fridge-freezers? Or do you mean the really large double door fridges?

Not the OP but here in the UK there's a separate category of fridge-freezers called "American Fridge Freezers" which are typically the huge ones you describe. Everybody I know has a fridge-freezer, but not many of those are "American Fridge Freezers".

Not sure where he's been, but as far as I can tell from Google, they're not that uncommon, at least in Norway. Own experience is also that most people seem to have a separate freezer in addition to a fridge, so there's not always a need for a combination of the two.

Most of the things he mention doesn't really hold truth, at least not where I live. Go outside the cities, and you'll find plenty large houses. As for AC and pools...parts of Europe doesn't really need the first, and the second is also kind of luxurious, at least to me. I've got a 5 minute walk to a fresh water beach when the temperature is high enough, and when it's not I really don't want to be in the water outside at all...

being a software developer/CTO/etc myself, I was able to buy a home in Portugal and Germany. You should just look for places out of the big centers but with potential to be developed in the next 5 years.

You can go freelance, set up company in Lithuania and pay <20% effective tax rate over 100,000€+ yearly income.

Still not as good as Google salaries, but better lifestyle for sure.

> You can go freelance, set up company in Lithuania and pay <20% effective tax rate over 100,000€+ yearly income.

How would that work? Your personal income will still be taxed based on where the employee resides. The company has to disburse income for someone to use it.

The company can also incur expenses by investing into a tennis club or into a coastal area housing project ;-)

I mean, you do not need 100,000€/year to live comfortably in most of EU.

the homes are smaller but the build quality is better :)

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