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Comment by gtirloni | Hacker News Reader

This is nice but if Europe doesn't fix their tech salaries situation (half US' in most cases, if not lower), I don't think it's sustainable.

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You simply don’t need such inflated salaries if schools are free, roads are not broken, trains exist, healthcare is affordable, grocery stores are in biking distance, parks are good and free and plenty, labor laws are in your favour, utilities markets mostly aren’t dysfunctional and a 2-bedroom apartment doesn't cost $10000/m.

Americans compare their salaries to European ones but never stop to imagine the insane high “taxes” they pay for stuff that we get cheaply or for free.

I'm not even saying the one is better than the other. There's a lot to be said for the American system of only paying for what you need. It's just.. you can't just compare dollars/euros like that. There's reddit posts of people who earn $900k/y and openly wonder whether that's enough to live in NYC and that shit is equally unfathomable to the average European as the idea of a dev earning €70k/y is to the average American.

True. But the systems are more and more breaking down. Its unsustainable. At least what I can tell from Germany and the Netherlands. to see a healthcare specialist, you wait 3-6months in some cases. Not talking about the trains. Germany DB runs on time in only 50% of the cases. So thats a big problem

The trains that are 10 min late in Germany mostly not exist in many other countries. Sure Switzerland is the best, but Germany is pretty high up. It’s just less good than it used to be. Oh and you can ride almost everywhere for 60 EUR / month.

For healthcare if you get an IT salary you can either move to private insurance, or buy additional insurance, or just pay a consultation yourself for a fee that US people won’t believe.

Last 7 times i took the ICE, i had 5 delays. 3 times the restaurant wasnt available. 2 times they didnt stop at my destination and I had to rent a car. so yeah. I try to travel now either by car or plane. But even by car is terrible, especially in the south. More construction sites every year and none are finishing. . Health care is totally broken if you dont have private insurance. My step dad, who has, gets an appointment 1 day after he calls. my grand ma, who worked all her life and is now on public needs to wait 5 months IN PAIN.

the system is breaking down in front of our very eyes.

i am not living in Germany. i moved to fthe NL, but the situation is very similiar.

> Not talking about the trains

How does that compare to the public transport situation in the US?

Ehm, my parents some serious health issues the last two years and they usually had their appointments in days or at most a small number of weeks. (NL)

My partner has had three extensive cancer treatments in the Netherlands. She has had dietary and psychological specialists help her during and after each one.

All of this was just on normal health insurance and with normal clinics and hospitals.

Never did she have to wait more than perhaps 3 weeks tops for an appointment.

The medical system here is world class.

However Germany and it's infrastructure can not be compared to the Netherlands. I refuse to take trains through that country anymore.

> However Germany and it's infrastructure can not be compared to the Netherlands. I refuse to take trains through that country anymore.

In which country are the trains bad? Netherlands or Germany? Do you care elaborating why? is that punctuality? strikes? decaying infrastructure?

Yeah I see now how that was unclear.

I was talking about Germany's infrastructure. Last year I had 3x separate trips turn into chaos due to how broken their system is. Broken trains, broken track infrastructure etc. Think multiple hours on each trip rather than just 10 minutes delay.

The Ditch system is very reliable in contrast.

> At least what I can tell from Germany and the Netherlands. to see a healthcare specialist, you wait 3-6months in some cases.

Same in France, it can take a while to get an appointment to see some specialists nowadays. There's a clear decline there.

But if you have something bad, they'll treat you in time. Actually, a relative of mine has been diagnosed with cancer a not long ago. She got several surgeries and all the treatments with no wait, and at not cost.

There's no reason why it shouldn't be sustainable.

That's very alarmist, sensational and dramatic. The systems are going though some tough times, but they are not breaking down, that's what children would say to make their life more like a Hollywood movie.

My father had to go though multiple appointments and analysis to get his prostate and hernia checked. Never waited more than a week and paid 0 in total. Before, he'd probably only have to wait a couple days for appointments, but the stress the healthcare system is currently undergoing is abnormal due to the more aggressive cases of flue this season. All things considering, things are not "breaking down" (I'm even getting some second hand embarrassment reading those words).

Do you want to live in a school, on the streets, in a train, in a hospital, in a park or in a grocery store?

As long as housing is extremely expensive in Europe, nothing else matters except for higher salaries.

Housing is not extremely expensive in europe. Only close to the big cities it is.

It is extremely expensive almost everywhere when you compare to local salaries.

The person you're responding to is claiming that Americans have to pay $10,000 for a 2 bedroom apartment, thus that is why the salaries are so high.

That isn't true unless you're looking to rent a luxury apartment in a big city.

I never said that.

Person above you did, my bad

"trains exist"

Like Spain's commuter trains?

I suspect China or Russia don't have higher salaries, they still manage to build their own alternatives. And Airbus builds better planes than Boeing with European salaries.

I'm sure that with a bit of protectionism, we would build our tech as well as anybody else.

Tech jobs in IT in Moscow are paid(net) relatively similar to what you could get in EU.

So not US salaries.

Indeed, but cost of life is different as well. People usually compare US Bay area net salaries to Western EU salaries - but there are so many different things to consider as well(rent, insurances, taxes, etc) which imo spoils any constructive comparasion.

Not true. Plenty of European products are better. Consumer example: Spotify is better than Apple Music. Business example: Attio is better than every American CRM at SME/early stage startup stage.

Biggest problem has been talent going to US.

This problem is rapidly being solved by the US government.

The startup I work for was planning to raise next round in the US. This will not happen as the CEO refuses to travel to the US.

It’s the best time to build in the EU or UK there has ever been. I don’t expect America to pull out of this nose dive. The future of western software is in europe now, and globally I expect China to be the lead beginning with AI.

Assuming that people are solely motivated by money, which most aren't. You can't pay me enough to put my children into a school system that has "active shooter" drills. After a certain point money stops being a motivation, that point is well within the average EU tech salary band (perhaps excluding places like Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovenia and that general area).

But why? What's unsustainable about an email service, for example, run by competent European engineers at European salaries?

The huge influx of competent European engineers to the US is a real thing.

Will this continue?

That might not be the case any more if things get to the point where someone in Europe must use a European alternative.

That was true a few years ago, but not any more. Covid made a lot of US-based companies sack local developers and actually open offices in Europe. I have friends in Italy who, between 2022 and 2023, moved from local companies to US companies opening offices in Rome and Milano, and got a salary bump from ~30-35k to 80-90k plus bonus and RSUs. Same thing happening all over Europe.

I don't think that's motivated by money. The US companies simply solved more interesting problems. Working for a start up in the Bay area trying to invent a new industry, or scale systems to global is generally more interesting than working on a CRM system for mid-size lumberyards in Sweden. The CRM system pays well enough to have a comfortable lifestyle and provide for your family, but it's a little boring if you're 25 with a shiny new CS degree.

Because many European engineers move to the US does not mean at all that most European engineers move to the US. There are many engineers in Europe.

I hear that argument a lot, and honestly it sounds uninformed and downright disrespectful. Some kind of "I am a US developer, we US developers are the best, and the few good European engineers come here. The remaining ones in Europe are dumb".

Not to mention that I have talked to quite a few European engineers who could earn a lot more by moving to the US, but just really don't want to live in the US. Maybe there is a reason for that?

I think you underestimate how dramatically the perception of the US in Europe changed for the worse. It was already in nose dive during recent months, but the recent days (Greenland crisis) will put a nail in the coffin. I don’t have a crystal ball, but I expect that influx to dry up very soon.

What is the European alternative to the US military if Russia attacks Europe?

This whole thing just seems like the standard hysterical overreaction of people who spend too much time on social media.

> What is the European alternative to the US military if Russia attacks Europe?

European military. Why do some people act as if European countries had no armies?

And even if we had no armies and Russia attacked and totally destroyed us, how is it related to the topic discussed here, which is whether the influx of European engineers to the US will continue or not?

> This whole thing just seems like the standard hysterical overreaction of people who spend too much time on social media.

Perhaps. I don't think it is, but let's say you are right. How is that relevant? People do not want to go to a country they perceive negatively. Whether that perception is an objective fact or hysteria is, in this context, immaterial.

Well there is no "European military" per se and there will be no "Russia invades Europe" scenario, because "Europe" is a continent and not a sovereign nation.

What would happen is that Russia invades Poland, or Russia invades Romania or Bulgaria or something. Those are Eastern European countries. (I mean they all used to be Soviet bloc anyway.) Or Russia would invade Germany like the good ol' days. So whatever nation they invaded would sic their own armed forces on them, and their allies' too. NATO could jump into the fray.

Americans (and perhaps Russians too) often misunderstand how terribly small European nations are, really. They're mostly smaller than individual United States. So, less population, less time to transport stuff, fewer natural resources available in a sovereign context, etc. But lots of national borders.

So Russia won't invade "Europe" but they could go into one or more nations on the list.

High US salaries come from US VCs having to bid against other to capture talent. US VCs have more capital than EU VCs. This is why.

The EU is now going to start pumping money in to building European alternatives. EU software dev salaries are going to increase. All 27 states agreed to establish the saving and investments union.

Nothing will happen overnight but you'll see this start to play out over the next 5 years. It will take decades to catch up but we are starting.

Over what period of time do you predict economic downfall for European tech because of salaries?

Please explain your working. These last 40 years or more there has been a cliff of money, but Europeans continue to live and work in europe.

You have to have an incredibly narrow definition of "only good people work for more money and only poor/ineffective people work for less" to say people who don't chase the millions in a US company are somehow failures.

I might get lower salary, but if I break my leg I pay nothing and I am paid during my leave.

I doubt you break your leg every year though. The kind of companies that we're talking about (big tech that are national champions) offers health insurance (among other benefits) and 200-500k USD/year salaries.

I think culture and quality of life not withstanding, the raw numbers simply don't favor the EU becoming a tech leader with the current incentives.

The thing is that in Europe, you don't need your employer to have health insurance. It's more beneficial for everyone in the end (well, obviously not for the private health insurance companies who care more about their margins than public wellness).

> I think culture and quality of life not withstanding, the raw numbers simply don't favor the EU becoming a tech leader with the current incentives.

But maybe culture and quality of life should not be ignored :-).

Quality of life in places like San Francisco and New York is very high, and you get the insane salaries, and your healthcare is oftentimes mostly if not completely covered by your employer (I pay literally $0 out of pocket for high quality healthcare here in San Francisco).

> Quality of life in places like San Francisco and New York is very high

Quality of life is also a cultural thing. I know it's hard to understand for US people (I truly believe it is the case for cultural reasons), but many people really don't want the lifestyle of the US for all sorts of reasons. For some people, quality of life means easy access to healthy food, or to nature, seeing trees instead of giant concrete parking lots or 6-lanes highways, etc.

Have you ever been to San Francisco? How many 6 lane highways do you think exist in the city of San Francisco?

I can tell you (I live here) -- there are none. SF is one of the most beautiful cities on Earth, and I'm trying my hardest to visit as many cities on earth as possible.

I really don't see money as an incentive. Political and economic stability of the whole country is much more important. Of course you need enough to afford food and roof, but after that, I'm not chasing it.

I'm a freelance, and I take fun jobs, not jobs that pay well.

I think the OP used "breaking a leg" as an analogy. Interesting that you didn't pick that up.

A analogy for major health events that demand a lot of money, to which I replied you don't have $major_health_event every year. Interesting that you didn't pick that up.

If its not just breaking a leg, than you can be sure that you'll have at least one or two in a 10 or 20 years, each one you'd have to pay more than 50kUSD or more for full treatment including pills. In most of Europe, you'll be paying close to 0.

This talking point went out the window After America threatened to invade Greenland.

After that I bet some people would actually pay to develop software to defang the American threat.

I wouldn't want US salaries with US costs of living.

Also working for companies located in Ireland[0] or Switzerland you can have your US salary, it's just that the pool of jobs is limited.

[0] Provided it's a company in the first of Ireland's two economies.

Not sure about Ireland, but Switzerland used to be true, but now it is also far behind since 5+ years.

See, Google Zurich vs Seattle

https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater...

Hm, after carefully reviewing the entries seem more or less the same, Zurich slightly lower.

Considering the low taxes and lower cost of living in Zurich (yes, lower than Seattle), and the much higher quality of life, Zurich is a no-brainer.

I'd say if you get a job in the same company, Zurich is competitive. The problem is that if you lose your job at Google in Seattle there are several hundreds of FAANG positions and probably thousands of other 200k$+ SWE jobs you can reapply to. In Zurich you will maybe see a dozen of openings in the small subsidiaries of Apple, Microsoft & Co., and maybe some individual job offers from small AI companies, and applying to any of these positions basically means competing against the whole rest of the continent.

> and applying to any of these positions basically means competing against the whole rest of the continent

Which should not be an issue, if as I read a lot in this page, "all good European engineers move to the US". It means that you only have to compete against the "bad ones" that stayed back, right? /s

Ex-Googlers in Zurich have no trouble finding other jobs. For people with the right CV, there are a lot more openings than that.

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou... says Zurich is 33% more expensive and I remember it that way.

Numbeo shows averages, and the basket of goods that it considers is not what a well-off person would buy. I Zurich I could live perfectly well without having a car, just with public transportation, and French and Italian cheeses and wine are a cheaper than in Seattle.

As a well off person your most significant purchase is going to be a house, and in Seattle they are 3x cheaper.

I just left Seattle Greater Area and my 350sqm admittedly old house + a small ADU with an outdoor pool went for $2M (at the moment it was a downturn, so maybe $2.5M tops now). What can you get for that money in Greater Zurich Area? A 100sqm flat?

In the Zurich Greater Area, you can get this for example: https://www.immoscout24.ch/buy/4002631314. Keep in mind that in most of Europe, real estate ads show the living space, i.e. surface net of walls, corridors, closets, cupboards, etc... whereas in US/Canada it's the gross surface. Those 350sqm are prolly 280 "livable". So if you're willing to live outside the Zurich city core, prices are comparable to Seattle but construction quality is way higher.

Also, most mortgages in Switzerland are very peculiar: you pay 20% down, but then you don't ever pay off the principal, only interest on the remaining 80% which is owned in perpetuity by the bank. The interest rates are kept very low and the currency quite stable, because most of the citizens rely on it. So your monthly interest could be 400-500 CHF, and you invest the rest however you prefer.

This is incomparable. Here's a friend's house from the neighborhood: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2845-140th-Ave-NE-Bellevu...

much larger, much closer to everything, almost an acre of land

How long was the commute from your place?

The rail network in and around Zurich is reliable and punctual, so you can live anywhere along that 30km long lake and still have your commute be 30-40m, without needing to search for a parking spot and whatnot.

I experienced this myself when I was briefly commutung from Pfäffikon(SZ).

Commute to where? 15 minutes walking from Microsoft main campus and 10 minutes driving from a new Facebook campus. 10 minutes driving to a good daycare.

It's not just about salaries, but also the lack of a culture for seeding and financing. The fear of failed investments really dominates. Government and EU-backed financing is a joke, and I'm not even talking about the terms or amounts, but who actually gets them. It's pure waste of taxpayer money and should be abandoned.

I am not saying you are wrong, but Trump has shown exactly how quickly a "culture" can crumble down. Despite "checks and balances" the American democracy has done nothing to slow down the slide into dictatorship.

So how long will the culture last?

Why not?

I had offers from companies across the pond, and likely could make about 2x-3x what I make here.

What for? I live a comfortable life here.

The higher US salaries are a bug, not a feature, in this context.

Personally it's not all about money. I even moved to a lower wage country in Europe for better quality of life.

Having enough is what I care about and things are a lot cheaper here too. Not to mention free healthcare, social security. I don't need a car and a public transport pass is 25€ a month. That alone saves me so much money. The time till the next metro train counts down in seconds here.

When I had a car in the past it would cost me hundreds per month and it was such a headache.

I'd never move to the US even if I could make 3x as much. In fact I got an offer from a FAANG once (with the whole H1B managed by some agency I think) but I declined. I only applied because they advertised it as a local job but then when the offer came it was in California. Nope.

It very much is sustainable. See China, Russia, Korea and Japan, all varying degrees of being much less dependent on US tech than the EU is.

The actions of the current US administration seem to have provoked intense negative reactions, or perhaps caused long simmering resentment to boil over. I hope some of this energy goes towards cultivating a more entrepreneurial, less risk-averse culture in Europe.

As much as you may detest all the other great powers jostling for position with seemingly cursory attention paid to moral considerations, making your core identity the cultured "nice guy" is likely a trap. I'd love to see the resurgence of a strong Europe. I think this will require some introspection and more action than simply boycotting Google and Amazon.

Before we closed our office in Mountain View years ago, every time we went over there:

- I could not get out of my San Francisco Hotel to get to a deli across the road without having to step over at least 5 homeless people.

- I could not fail to notice that even those people who did have jobs and not lost their homes to tech bros had a surprisingly low number of healthy teeth for a modern western first-world society

- An apartment with noisy air conditioning, dirty carpets and questionable building codes would cost more in rent than a villa at the Côte d’Azur.

- The air quality during fire season was a nightmare. During my time there I developed asthma.

- Everybody hated the arrogant ignorant tech people that invaded their communities, forced them out of their houses to then have to commute into the city or valley to serve tech bros. Yes, as a European I am not that well trained to constantly ignore that my privilege are causing the community around me to suffer. That I do not "earn" this gigantic salary, I am just grabbing the resources pretending the "normal" people don't deserve to have any of that.

You are getting paid so much because you in exchange are living in a sh*thole country without education, healthcare, public transport, clean air, or anything else that I as a "wealthy" developer person would expect to receive in exchange for my work.

Take your US salary, and invest it into a travel into some of the more up-to-date regions of the world. Those with clean air, education, healthcare. Places I have visited that are better than the Valley in this regard include:

- Pretty much all of Europe. Maybe with the exception of Greece and Spain, when they are now burning thanks to the "drill drill drill" people. - China - Iran - New Zealand - Australia - Canada ...

Yes, the amount of zeros on your US salary might look soooooooooooooooo impressive. But they are zeros. They don't buy you a livable live in a modern civilization.

Right now you are just bribed with money not to see the civil war getting ignited in minnesota.

Oh oh oh, now I remember! I have even been to two countries with civil wars a while ago, who had clean air, education and healthcare. And I think even directly after the civil war, all of Kosovo had a lower percentage of homeless people than the US has today.

Yes, another one of my drastic postings. But you will survive. Be brave: With someone who clearly is being paid a lot for being clever, I can assume that you think this through again, to calculate what the better deal is. You know the average amount of student debt people who want to become programmers have? Zero.

You are not getting more VALUE out of working in the US in high-tech compared to other places. There are places on this world, where being a good programmer buys you a wonderful life with nobody around you being poor, or without healthcare, or homeless. Try Estonia. They have a lovely tech community, a fully digital government. You can become a digital citizen, open your own company in minutes. And you will have a far better life.

Can you talk more about the Estonian tech scene? I am a Canadian-Estonian and I have been considering moving to Europe in the next year or so.

This here has been the key ingredient for the startup culture Estonia now has:

https://www.e-resident.gov.ee

It's just crazy. I went to the Estonian embassy in Berlin, was offered coffee, and 20 minutes later I had my digital card allowing me to create a limited company.

What is your experience running that company? It looks great on paper, but if you don’t mind sharing, what is the practical side of things? Have you encountered any stumbling blocks?

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