It was all because child expenses and healthcare.
Perhaps this is an intentional tradeoff that in some way leads to trusting.
I considered moving to France or the UK, but in both cases I would have to take serious salary reductions. Anecdotally, I know that Tesla Berlin hire SWEs at around 60k EUR. Offers from Norway and Sweden have been considerably below what the Danish unions report as average salary.
It is possible though to get paid a more reasonable rate in DK (which imo is good) and living in Denmark does not guarantee a huge pay cut / local companies don't suppress tech salaries into oblivion, even if the only saving grace is foreign offices.
But DKK 1.000.000 a year is not far off senior roles. (However, a lot of roles are also much lower).
You get some upside wrt work/life balance. But very limited flexibility in other ways. And culture-wise it's another can of worms.
Generally speaking it's better to work for foreign companies here.
Not too many options tbh, and you need a bit of luck, but there are some. It's hard to figure out from the job description so you usually need to do a bit of digging.
To keep in mind as well is that in Denmark the vast majority of jobs are not advertised. I know it happens everywhere but I never experienced anything that comes even close in other countries.
What used to be fairly popular is "consulting" at 2x+ salary. Almost zero risk due to high demand, this has changed somewhat.
People would just bring their friends in, or give them contracts as freelancers. In one instance the us office got involved and stopped it. I've been in a few "mock" interviews.
They call it trust in Denmark, I call it nepotism.
On those occasions I've often wondered how much of an impact the high trust and high social of safety has - for instance compared to salary. I'd imagine that it plays a big role in making people stay.
It's hard to put a value on a high trust high quality of life society without living in it first
It's important that Denmark continues to attract high quality employers (such as in tech, big tech companies with American levels of pay).
I think our work ethic here seems to help with that too (Danes seem to be 100% switched on all the time at work but will not touch it once the day is over). At least the impression I get, which is of course subjective and just my experience, is that US company owners consider us more or at least as productive as folks on the west coast.
Personally, I hold the belief that these should not exist. They are a race to the bottom only the well educated can participate in.