So, what gives as an European SW developer in this income bracket?
1. Go to US 2. Negotiate US salary 3. Come back to your native village, hopefully with "well beyond" money 4. Profit?
Or just directly work for an US company, I guess.
1. US company has an office in EU, so you can work as an employee. Chances are the company is not paying you the US wages, but European ones... at this point, what's the benefit of working for the American company?
2. US company doesn't have an office in Europe. So either you work as a contractor for them (and that's a lot of hassle for a lot of people who are used to work as an employee) or the US company uses a third-party company to hire you as an employee (and that's a hassle for the US company, so many don't offer this)
3. US company is willing to hire contractors living in Europe... but then you have to be a contractor (personally, I don't like it) and you have to adapt to their TZ (personally, I don't want that).
As many have said before, in Europe the salaries for software engineers come in different "tracks". You have the usual 25K-40K-60K EUR/year for junior-medior-seniors, but you also have the 50K-80K-100K EUR/year (becoming more common at least in western europe), and the not unheard of 90K-120K EUR/year for seniors in some companies.
It would be great to get paid US equivalent salary and be able to be in EUrope.
This is the goal: decrease salaries.
I've lived in Portugal pretty much my whole life and don't want to leave, working in software development for almost 10 years now. If I had left before 2019 and decided to return now, I would pay IRS taxes on 50% of my income for 5 years, and get access to an exclusive credit line.
If I was a foreign citizen and had never been to Portugal and I had a "profession of high cultural and economic worth", I could purchase a house here, register fiscally as a non-habitual resident, and also get a bunch of discounts on foreign income, national income, rent income, capital gains among other things.
This strikes me as quite unfair, not only for giving people who are in a better financial state all these benefits, but also by putting more pressure on the already inflationed housing market. The Golden Visa programme also "helped", along with many other things. Some of these benefits were or are in the process of being reduced, but many still remain.
I understand this grows our economy, in principle, but mostly seeing negative consequences on the lives of my mostly non-tech friends and family is hard to ignore...
As far as the housing market goes I've always seen blaming foreigners as a very convenient excuse. Truth is our market follows the price of mortgages and those haven't been this cheap ever. Blame your fellow countrymen whose parents can loan them 50K to get a foot in the door instead.
About we not getting a tax raise... true, but we do have price indirect cost increases, mostly in housing. Right now most of my friends outside tech here in Lisbon are making ~800€ a month. That's around the cost for a tiny 1 bedroom within 45min of their workplace, a lot of them have to share a house with people they don't know.
Bringing skilled people is good, but will they be retained once time is up for the benefits? Is the government actually investing in high-tech or just picking up the scraps from foreign business?
Perhaps the positive consequences are just harder to see? If these people grow the economy, then everyone benefits to a degree.