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Comment by anilr | Hacker News Reader

I think it's really hard to compare. Salaries are much lower but quality of life (IMO) much higher. I worked at a few tech companies in France. Almost nobody worked outside of the standard work hours (9-6 with 1 hour for lunch). Most people at lunch together; often at a restaurant.

People didn't worry about 401Ks & IRA - it's expected the security system and standard pension from working is sufficient.

People didn't worry about saving for kids college - they are close to free; same for healthcare.

You have 6 weeks of vacation (one job I had gave 9 weeks); and it's normal to take 2-3 weeks off at a time. In the US, from my experience, people don't leave for more than a week, and most of the work they missed is waiting for them upon their return.

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> Most people ate lunch together; often at a restaurant.

This was such a big letdown when I moved back to the US from Italy. Over there, at the company I worked at, there were two big groups that mostly ate lunch together - those who brought something from home, and those who walked over to the local cafe to have some pasta or a salad or something.

People in Italy are pretty good at just kind of coexisting... like we weren't best friends or anything, but everyone was pretty friendly and cordial and we talked about stuff outside of work, and it was just a pleasant experience.

I'd forgotten about US work culture by the time we moved back here and in my new job, I asked a few people if anyone went to lunch regularly and got blank looks, and then I remembered what things are like here and had kind of a sad moment.

This is extremely variable upon where you live and the culture of your workplace. For me, most of the places I've worked in SV have had a very active lunch culture where we go out for group lunches and have a nice time and shit talk about our bosses being idiots and where we're all gonna go work next.

I could see it being non-existent in some places though but be the change you want to see. Some people are just waiting for someone else to start it.

> Salaries are much lower but quality of life (IMO) much higher.

I doubt quality of life is higher for senior engineers at big tech companies, other than having more time off. How many engineers have 3,000 sq ft house? How many can retire in their 50s if they want? Can they afford private tutors or nannies or fly first class?

It doesn’t take BigTech salaries to do most of those things. We had a 3100 square foot house built in the Northern suburbs of Atlanta in the “good school system” for $335K. Going by the 28% rule, I would have only had to make around $100k.

We just sold the house last year for $670K. It would be around $5000 a month all in - principal + interest + insurance + property taxes + PMI. I did my calculations based on putting 5% down.

The median senior software engineer salary in Atlanta is $170K. Married with two incomes would easily make that affordable and accomplish other short and long term goals. Admittedly, I would probably move further out in the burbs or buy a smaller place in 2025.

Equating quality of life with "stuff you can buy" is a very American way of thinking. No salary tier can get you beautiful public parks or effective public transit, for example.

I can’t live in a public park. I mean I can.

> No salary tier can get you beautiful public parks

You act as if nowhere in the US has public parks?

> or effective public transit.

You act as if having a car is a major issue? I personally work remotely and have across three jobs since 2020z.

It's the ease of the access thing. Winter was very white lately, so I swang by greenhouse on my way home, and it costed me 4 dollars and an additional hour on a subway. Met my friend, decided to have a coffee-crocheting session after work hours.

I can fit so much stuff around my work, because most places are half an hour travel distance from it. So I can visit my family, meet a friend on a crochet session and visit greenhouse all in one week, and then have my weekend totally free. It will add a few hours to my commute, yes, but I mostly read books or make plans when I'm in transition. Once a week I get home late because I go to the nearby music school to learn drums (and it doesn't add to my commute!). I also could swing by an archery or almost every other activity.

Gets better when it's summer, one summer I rode to the lake with another friend almost every day for two weeks. If our city had suburbia we would have to travel for hours.

There's a difference also between having public park as an option to go visit on a weekend, and option to visit a park on a lunch break or just because you didn't feel like staying at home. An option to run in the park every morning.

Suburbia feels like you own your home and your land. Good towns feel like you co-own them. Like you can do whatever you want, and there is a lot of options.

When I did live in the burbs of Atlanta GA- both the south side and the north side, there were also public parks, bike trails etc within 3 miles of my home.

All of the things you mentioned are right there in suburbia. We rarely went “in town” for anything and I remember having a conversation with some relatives that said it had been years since they actually been to Atlanta proper and they lived in the burbs.

Of course you can find places in most major cities that are walkable and around parks and lakes. We briefly looked at moving to this suburb of Orlando

https://www.zillow.com/orlando-fl/lake-eola-park_att/

https://www.orlando.gov/Parks-the-Environment/Directory/Lake...

If we had decided to stay in Atlanta, we were looking at places close to Piedmont Park

https://www.zillow.com/atlanta-ga/piedmont-park_att/

You don’t have to move to Europe. Right now the original poster was comparing Seattle of all places as far as affordability. That’s one of the most expensive cities in the US and the weather is always awful. I actually turned down a chance to even interview for a job there because I knew I would never want to live in Seattle and the compensation difference wouldn’t have been worth it.

Three miles is quite a long way though. From central Amsterdam, for example, it’s basically as far as the ring road and contains all the main parks

So everyone lives in these idyllic places close to parks in all of the Netherlands or the EU or is that a choice people make just like in the US?

After my youngest graduated high school and we became empty nesters, we were in fact looking for that smaller place, walkable area, where we could easily get to gyms, restaurants, a park, etc.

We decided to change our entire city to a place in Florida with better weather and no state income taxes. Those places do exist in the US just like I am sure that most people who live in the EU don’t live in the idyllic places you describe.

I’d say that it’s pretty normal in the Netherlands to be very close to a park. It’s a very densely populated country. In Amsterdam specifically I think they consciously decided a few hundred years ago the parks should be everywhere. It’s hard to generalise about the EU as it’s pretty large and diverse, but most of the places I’ve been, 3 miles would be a long way to go in a city. I would expect to come across several parks of varying sizes, shops, schools, etc. In the countryside there are fewer facilities generally, but less need for parks.

I'm not sure if you're European? If you are, do you not understand that we have more green space and public parks in America? I'm literally a two minute walk from a huge park with open lawns, walking trails, and multiple playgrounds for kids. A five minute drive and I can be at a trail head leading into the foothills.

I'm a twenty minute drive (or less) to multiple FAANG companies satellite offices. The coastal American suburbs are quite different than what many might be picturing.

Good reminder of why I picked EU over the US to move to.

I really can't stand the US way of thinking. This awful hyper-individualism is so dismaying.

Because I said I couldn’t live in a park or because having a car is to “individualistic”?

Just a quick Google search shows that 88% of households have a car in the EU compared to 95% in the US. The EU is not some great Utopia where no one needs a car.

It's not about needing or not needing a car.

I perceive in the US this general distaste for "things that benefit society as a whole" versus "things that benefit me, all else be damned".

Many things here in Europe don't benefit me directly, and I pay taxes for that. And I think that is a good thing. I can still live a fairly comfortable life, could buy a house, raise a family, have nice things, etc.

A nice public park may not benefit you directly, but it doesn't mean it is not something desirable to have around. "I can't live in a public park" is indicative of a pervasive attitude that irks me to no end.

May all public parks near you become concrete parking locations. Then you can park your car there.

But they still couldn't live there, whether grass or concrete. Nobody in this thread expressed any interest in a place to park a car, it was "a 3,000 sq ft house".

The attitude is the same.

Yeah, but they can't live in the park, you see, even with a good attitude.

I mean, there are parks close to where I live.

Oddly enough, there are also houses.

i don't need any of that though.

i live in tokyo as a senior engineer with a ~75-80k usd salary. it's comfortable.

it's safe and practical. i can walk to the park with my daughter in less than 5 minutes. and her school is 15mn by bike.

supermarket and restaurants etc. are all at walking distance.

flying is indeed expensive but i don't fly much nor do i want to, so i don't care

i don't need nannies and tutors, i can teach her most of the stuff by myself (i mean i was good at that when i was a kid, + i was a tutor in univ...)

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