Site seems down, possibly HN hug of death
Sure Europeans get paid less - but they also get a bunch of great benefits like time off and government paid health care, so it works out
Also, the average salary in America is skewed by FANMAG paying really high salaries
In the end, I'm happy with my work and paid fairly. I deserve a 10% raise, but I'm not pressured to switch right now
HN of the future, how did I do?
At $45,284 the US has the highest household net disposable income per capita in the OECD (<http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/united-states/>), where "disposable income" (<http://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=46>" accounts for healthcare and government benefits.
> time off
I get 21 days in the US, but any holiday that falls on a weekend I am guaranteed to get on a weekday.
Ultimately it ends up somewhere around 30 paid days off I would guess. Back in Germany, if a holiday fell on a weekend, I just lost it.
> government paid health care
In Germany I had to pay 7.5 percent of my salary + my employer had to match that. When I was freelancing I had to do the full 15%.
The US clearly has the worse healthcare system overall, but I pay a LOT less for MUCH better service. That is however just because of my employer and on a population level it's a catastrophe.
That being said, my impression is also very skewed by FANMAG and the average experience is probably worse.
This argument always gets brought up. The thing is, even in much of the Europe, highly paid professionals don't use the government paid health care, but instead get health insurances from their employers, so the situation is the same as in the US. For some reason those health insurances seem to be much cheaper here than in the US, though.
I know zero people who have private health insurance. Some companies offer it as a perk, but I have never heard of anyone paying for their own private health insurance.
You can also negotiate PTO. Passive-aggressive "unlimited" (but not really) PTO is becoming a common bullet point in startup JDs now.
That's not true. I pay about $10,000 a year for healthcare and my company pays roughly another $20,000. And that's before I have pay per visit up to my rather high deductible. And I work for a large company with good benefits. Healthcare costs in the U.S. are insane and almost hard to fathom if you haven't lived through them yourself.
Oh wow. What are your circumstances where these costs make sense? Did you/your wife give birth, and someonwin your family have surgery? Are there special circumstances that would jack up the bill?
$30k for a family is REALLY high for almost any situation.
So maximum in any year was $7,000. And unless we had a birth or major surgery it was typically much less.
It wasn’t for a FAANG, but one company I interviewed for in the USA wasn’t going to give me health coverage for 6 months.
It's not at all uncommon for companies, even small ones, to pay 100% for the employee. Paying for spouses and children is much less common.
Usually there are options like Kaiser in CA that are all inclusive similar to what you’d see in Europe. Some offer cheaper options. Some offer options that include health savings contributions from the employer to offset high deductibles.
I pay $1000/year for my policy.
Most salary comparisons are done pre-taxes. Europe has much higher taxes, in part to pay for that free education and healthcare.
That part about higher taxes paying for "free" education and healthcare had me cracking up.
But are you American or European? :)