Comment by carlob | Hacker News Reader

Comment by carlob | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't compare European salaries with US so quickly. I have a cautionary tale to tell: when in 1990 the USSR collapsed, many Russian physicists decided to move abroad, some to western Europe, some to the USA. At first the European ones were complaining about their lower salaries, but once they started having kids and needing more medical care, they realized that they were actually much better off than their American counterparts. The lesson here is: you might even make much less, but in Europe there are much much better public schools which are free, hospitals are (mostly) free and in general Universities are either free or at least one order of magnitude less expensive than in the US. Should I go on? Most contracts in the US do not have unlimited sick leave, whereas in Europe we get that and 20 days of holiday; the US are one of the four countries in the world with no national law on maternity leave (who are the other three is left as an exercise to the reader…). But I agree with the general point that salaries of developers should not be so low compared to managerial positions.

I see this argument (Europe is superior) made again and again. Let me try to clear the misconceptions. Please note i am a immigrant in US and somewhat qualified to compare it with the other countries.

1, Public education is free in US. Of-course the quality varies depending on which school district you live. But in most metros (other than NYC/Bay area/north east) you will be able to buy a 4 bedroom house in a good school district for around $250k.

2, Healthcare - Health Insurance is paid by the company in almost 99% of the cases. Depending on the insurance plan sometime you will have some out of pocket costs (lke $20 copay per doctor visit etc).

3, Vacation - Most companies offer around 2 weeks of paid vacation a year (in addition to sick leaves). Yes its less than in europe but you can always take non paid vacation.

So the bottomline is US offers 2x the salary with 1/2 the cost of living and 3/4 the social benefits as Europe. If you do the math its better to work in IT in US compared to any part of the world.

1. [Public education]. If one supposes a good public school in the US is comparable to schools in France or Scandinavia, which I doubt, the issue of secondary education being at least 10 times more expensive remains.

2. [Healthcare]. Not all insurance plans are equal and most of them do not cover limitlessly. In the unlucky event of something like cancer, Americans are left bankrupt, Europeans are not.

3. [Vacation]. Most of the times those two weeks actually include sick leave. Moreover taking one month of unpaid vacation can be a career suicide, so people don't actually do it.

Public education: I was talking about schools in good school districts. They are comparable to most European schools.

Healthcare: If you have a good health insurance, you are covered better than any other govt sponsored health system in the world. Again i agree you are screwed if you don't have a insurance but that's a whole different argument

Vacation: I am a Indian living in US and many of my friends take a month off (2 weeks paid + 2 weeks unpaid) when they go to india. Its not a big problem

From what i see most of the people arguing that europe is better are Europeans who never worked (for a meaningful time) in US or american leftists who adore everything european :)

Public education: but what happens when you need to go to college?

Healtcare: I want to see data supporting that, IMHO it's just patently false.

Vacation: if you say so I rest my case…

I'm the worst of possible worlds I am an European leftist who's actually employed by an American company but works remotely from Europe, so I'd say I know pretty well both systems.

Yes it costs a lot more to go to college in US compared to Europe. But if you take into account the higher salary and low tax you will be still better off in the end. This is assuming you have 2 kids not 4 :)

I grew up in the US and now live in Europe so I'm at least as qualified as you.

Education: Yea, get ready to pay insane prices to get in these so-called "good districts" because there are so few and everyone wants in. Realistically, you're going to have to send your kids to private school if you don't want to worry about violence and them learning anything useful. But you'll still pay for the near useless public system.

Healthcare: this is a bold faced lie. Two separate independent reports compared health care around the world and found that the US was the most expensive in the world and did not provide the best care. Where do you get your metrics? Some talking head like Hanity?

Vacation: I don't know where you work but a lot of companies seriously frown on taking unpaid leave. There is a lot of culture in the US that feels that 2 weeks is all anyone should want. When I was telling my friends about how excited I was to come to Europe and get 5 weeks vacation, one of them told me he thought that was immoral!

I worked the majority of my life in the US and I'll never go back unless it's to do a startup.

1. Why do you doubt it? There are very good public schools in US. But the variance is very high, so the bad schools are very bad, which brings the average down.

You're not clearing any misconceptions, you're making them. It would take a lot of research and work to discover what a "good district" is, while in western Europe you can just send your kids to school and not worry about it. Lots of states don't have any good districts at all.

Healthcare paid for by the company is the stupidest thing ever. The company is trying to save money and having them pay for health care means (a) you have little or no choice of what provider they choose and (b) you cannot be without a job ever due to the insane exposure that would put you and your family under and keeping the insurance plan you had with your employer will usually be prohibitively expensive.

Many employers just give you "catastrophic" coverage which will leave you with something like a $10k deductible (I'm serious) and if you do manage to go over that expect to take the company to court for not paying. Anecdotal but I only know two people who tested this (I'm one of them) and in both cases the insurance companies refused to pay. I sued them to get my bills paid. The other guy wasn't so lucky. Shame, he would have retired by 40 if it weren't for a surprise illness.

You can't "always" take non paid vacation. In many companies if you do that make sure you take all your stuff with you and polish your resume before you leave.

2x the salary? Not where I live. I'm above all but a Facebook/Google salary (but those are within view) and I don't know what 3/4 the social benefits you're talking about are. The US has worse roads, hostile public services (e.g. DMV, police, etc.), a horrible health care system and poor worker protections (compared to Europe). Could you break down your social benefits because I literally cannot imagine what you could possibly mean with this.

I don't know why people are downvoting parent, most of the points are true.

"It would take a lot of research and work to discover what a "good district" is, while in western Europe you can just send your kids to school and not worry about it. Lots of states don't have any good districts at all." All of this is false, sorry. There are sites like greatschools.org where most public schools are rated. It is relatively easy to distinguish a good district from a bad one. And I don't believe you can send your kids to schools and not worry anywhere in the world, it is just a bad way to raise them. As about states not having any good districts.. Examples, please.

Health insurance certainly sucks, but 10k deductibles are not common at all. Insurance companies pay most of the time, if you are in network they really cannot refuse after the fact.

Salaries for software engineers in US are much higher than in most of Europe, and taxes are lower. Though it is probably not 2x.

1, 10k deductible?, thats unheard of unless if they worked for a startup with funding issues :)

2, It takes about an hour to find out the good school districts in any metro!.

3, 2x salary is real, Just compare the 2200 euro beginner salary ($35k yearly) mentioned in the post with US. An beginner american programmer can easily start at $60k. After tax it will be really 2x than in europe.

Anyway with so many downvotes i think its not a good idea to argue further :)

The US has a national law on maternity leave, the family and medical leave act.

Of course, we expect US laws to be less generous because it is the government of a federation of states, like something between a European national government and the EU.

A national law that imposes at least 0 weeks of maternity leave. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave#Americas

No paid leave.

Do less fortunate women with a new born child receive some kind of support from the state in the US, in case the father or family doesn't support them?

There are various programs to help with different things. Examples are Medicaid [1] for health care, Nutritional Assistance for food [2], and pre-Kindergarten education [3]. How effective these are I'm not sure, I don't have any first-hand experience with them.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicaid [2] http://www.fns.usda.gov/wic/ [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_Start_Program

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