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Comment by dr_dshiv | Hacker News Reader

If you use price per square meter to compare European housing to American housing, Europe seems super expensive. But, if you compare by the functional space (# bedrooms), Europe is cheap.

I moved from San Diego to Amsterdam and was very happy to find 3-4 bedroom apartments to buy (the bank accepted my self employment income and gave a 1.6% interest rate). Apartments are well designed so you don’t need as much space.

I live half a block from a grocery store and still get a lot of groceries delivered. We have 3 kids and no cars. Cheap and easy to rent if we want one for the day. I love this life style where the kids can walk and bike everywhere themself.

Son: “Dad, I have to go to guitar, but it is raining”

Dad: “Here are your rain pants. Hurry, but be careful biking in the rain”

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I guess you're on a US salary as a contractor? There's no way I could afford more than 2 bedrooms in the city as a senior engineer, and even that's a push.

I’m not in Amsterdam, but my mate works in Amsterdam and lives on a single engineer Dutch salary in a beautiful 2 bed with a separate dinning/kitchen/lounge near Sarphatipark, 10 minutes walk from Museumplein, walking distance from the Rembrandt Museum and to work.

Did he buy or rent the apartment recently and from his own savings+income? Many such stories involve an old rental contract, a family-owned apartment or sizeable inheritance.

Yep, and commonly also a loan from parents for downpayment to buy.

Not a lack of 75-100 m2 (3 bedrooms) under €600,000 in walking distance from the most famous tourist attractions, I know as I looked.

Smaller 2 bedrooms can be bought in the center of Amsterdam for €350,000 with a €35,000 deposit (10%).

How is that not viable for a tech worker?

It's sort of viable, but you'd have to spend 2-3 years living in overpriced temporary sublets while trying to save up to that deposit, and still it just supports the original comment which was that you could only afford 2 bedrooms and even that is a push.

To get one of those 600k apartments you'd have to flip your first apartment for the bigger downpayment, and that's gonna take another 2 years.

That 2 bedroom apartment costs way more than my 5 bedroom house that is ~420 m2. Housing prices in some places are crazy.

Evidently.

That 2 bedroom apartment is in one of the most desirable areas of the most desirable city in the country. Location matters.

We are talking about living right in the centre of Amsterdam. No one is stopping you from buying something with a much lower deposit at a cycling distance from the city centre or a much smaller deposit with a 30 minutes public transport commute for 2 years so you can then afford to live in one of the most desirable areas of a main city with a sizeable tourist industry.

That’s 2 years saving to then live where you want and then an extra 2 years to live where you want in the apartment that you want which is oversized for a single person.

Why do you need a 3 bed as a single person and what’s your ideal scenario? Do you want to be able to afford a house without a deposit, is that it?

Bought from own savings and income 4 years ago with no help from parents, not a family-owned apartment or sizeable inheritance. Owner is an immigrant from a developing country, the exchange rate alone would be prohibitive for any family assistance.

>Bought from own savings and income 4 years ago

IIRC the housing market in the Netherlands 4 years ago was way more accessible than the madness of today so that's probably not a surprise that he could afford it. Ask him if he could have bought in the market of today please.

Still affordable in today’s market. This shouldn’t even be up to discussion as anyone can check the available houses for sale in Amsterdam and what they sold for.

My own company. Capitol cities are expensive; but compared with most, I still find Amsterdam reasonable. Part of the reason is that it isn’t necessary to live in Amsterdam to have the kind of lifestyle I’m describing; there are so many walkable, bikeable, transport accessible,kid-friendly and beautiful neighborhoods in this country. Open to critique; it’s a beautiful day today so I have my rose colored glasses on.

Here are the family places in Amsterdam for less than 900k. According to ABNAMRO, that’s affordable (with mortgage), if you have two incomes that gross 150k. https://www.funda.nl/koop/gemeente-amsterdam/

Yeah, that US viewpoint kinda irks me too. Of course Europe is cheap when you earn US tech salaries. Amsterdam is definitely not cheap on your average non-FAANG/IB local Dutch wages.

Even FAANG pays shit in Europe. I was paid 75k at Amazon.

Europe is designed for the landed aristocracy, not working people.

For FAANG, levels.fyi shows pretty competitive salaries in European cities where it has presence (Munich, Amsterdam, London, etc) — most are in six figures. Every time I put those figures in expatistan.com, I absolutely don’t get the feeling that FAANG salaries are low in Europe.

Local European IT firms (your local broadband provider, or a supermarket chain) normally pay much less though.

I recall housing prices being mostly reasonable 15-20 years ago, I don't think our current woes are the result of any "design".

>I recall housing prices being mostly reasonable 15-20 years ago

And bitcoin was a fraction of a dollar just 10 years ago. Unfortunately, we don't have a time machine and the housing prices of today have far outpaced the earning increases that the working class saw in that time.

15-20 years ago, housing was seen mostly as a place you'd buy to live yourself, not an investment vehicle you'd buy to get grand returns from. That's the difference.

Our opinions on the cause aside, we had reasonably priced housing before, we can have it again, without fundamentally changing the way our cities are built (that's not to discount any other reasons to do so).

Europe is a museum.

This might be useful to you - trimodal nature of comp in NL.

https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...

In my experience, it's bullshit. The author must be conflating staff positions with "senior".

I was paid 75k as an L5 engineer at Amazon, that's like intermediate senior (two levels down from Staff). So maybe one level up you'd get 100-110k?

I've never seen salaries anywhere close to that article. Even contractors might pay $150k (and then you have to pay your own taxes, insurance, etc. out of that).

The author is spot on. You just happened to be working for the scrappiest/shittiest faang that's all. Shop around, there is decent money to be made in Europe - but of course it's not as easy to walk into it as in the US today. Oh and don't forget that it's TC that matters in big public tech, not salary.

I have gone through interview rounds a few months ago at several of the companies the author mentions in the blog post and I can confirm that the range seems about right. The offers I received for their EU offices were between €120k - €170k (total comp).

But - compared to what I have heard about the US, the variance between offers is much more extreme in the EU, depending on whether these companies only compete in the local market or globally, and it is really hard to figure this out before going through the whole process. I have been surprised by a few companies that pay very competitive salaries in the US but which are barely competitive compared to some of the salaries I know from local companies here in the EU.

So yeah, it is possible to find these salaries in the EU, but they will still be considerably lower than what you can expect in the US and the bad offers are harder to weed out in the EU.

>You just happened to be working for the scrappiest/shittiest faang that's all.

You know, with this statement you've just proved his point, that good tech wages in Europe are super scarce when you need to be very picky with wich FAANG you join for good compensation. That's basically skimming the cream off the cream you just skimmed. How much are you left with now, ~1% of the total tech jobs?

Amazon is worst payer among them in the US as well. Facebook and Google pay decent money in London and Zurich, almost on par with US in the latter, London is maybe ~30% less.

> How much are you left with now, ~1% of the total tech jobs?

If you want top 1% pay, you gonna have to hunt for top 1% jobs, seems obvious, no?

>If you want top 1% pay, you gonna have to hunt for top 1% jobs, seems obvious, no?

Of course, but the discussion was about the fact that the tech job market in Europe is poor. You pointing out that the top 1% devs in Europe make really good money doesn't change that since the 99% are left with sub-paar options.

To make it clearer, a better indication would be to look at median opportunities and wages in the tech sectors, and here the wages in the EU are far lower than in the US even when adjusted for the local purchasing power and real estate prices (actually, I think this makes it even worse for Europe, as stuff cost more and real estate is more expensive).

If you remove the 1%ers like FAANGS and other US unicorns pumped with VC money form the EU tech scene, you're not left with much good local grown opportunities, the wages take a massive nose-dive, which is what the majority is earning.

I am a senior dev (not staff, not even senior 2) and I make more than that. But I work remote for a US company - maybe investigate options there?

Anyone getting USD75k/EUR65K/GBP55K in Europe can afford to buy an apartment in any of the major cities, including London with access to a walking lifestyle.

Add a partner’s salary to the equation and you are walking your kids to school and living the dream.

> USD75k/EUR65K/GBP55K in Europe can afford to buy an apartment in any of the major cities,

That doesn't seem likely. I live in Dublin, and the median household income for a first time buyer is approximately 90k in euros.

I'm surprised that this is possible in London.

Evidently.

On £55k you can afford to borrow £247.5k.

£247.5k + 10% deposit and you are looking at £272k properties.

Check sold house prices in London and you’ll find plenty under £272k.

Possible in London which is one of the most expensive cities in the world.

So this depends on what multiple the bank will lend you. In Ireland, it's 3.5 whereas it looks like it's 4.5 in the UK.

Honestly though, apartments anywhere near the city in Dublin are still way out of reach for a person on your wage, even if the rules changed to 4.5.

Nevermind that saving a deposit while rents are quite high is no easy feat.

To be fair for me (Swiss and self employed) the renting prices in beautiful places like Haarlem or Rotterdam appeared really tempting. Nice big apartments nearby the city for less than $1000/m are basically unheard of in Switzerland, or Austria for that matter.

No idea what locals earn there, but from a outside perspective it appeared really affordable if you ignore the high taxes :3

If I may ask, your profile says "Professor of Human Centered Design" - is this why you moved to the Netherlands? I'm very curious about your work, based on that.

That’s why I moved to the Netherlands. While the pay for professors was almost half the pay in the USA (ouch), it was allowed for me to continue to run my company.

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