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Comment by yamillove | Hacker News Reader

Now compare your cousin’s yearly salary in Belgium with the average salary of a US employee doing the same job.

Now you compare the all-in cost of living across salary, taxes, housing, healthcare, and everything else.

Really depends on the type of job. Software? You are making bank in the US and partly because companies in the US can move quick because of their labor laws.

Are you aware that you are saying US devs are making bank in a thread about US devs being laid off >

Not sure why this is a thing.

As an extreme example, if Elon got fired from Tesla, I am sure he would be ok. He manages his money well and I am sure he does not think his job at Tesla is some king of God-given lifetime human right. If you are making $250k, a company is not expecting to be your baby sitter. You are a grown man or woman.

An employee needs to manage their economic life without depending on some company to make financial decisions for them. Getting laid off is simply part of life.

If you don’t want to be laid off, you can always start your own company and hire all these people, with your own money of course.

I think you meant to respond to a different post…

Are you aware for well over a decade US software engineers have been compensated many multiples compared to their counterparties outside of the US? 7% is around 280 employees.

Just because companies are holding layoffs does not mean software engineers are not still making bank.

They are laid off (with severance) not permanently disabled. They most likely will find other jobs (linkedin is already full of recruiting messages). I don't intend to make light of it - getting fired sucks, a lot. It's a terrible experience. But it should be also kept in perspective - software engineers, especially in the US, are very well paid, even in comparison with most other US employees. Compared to, say, Belgium, probably 2x and more. You can say living in a welfare state makes up to it, that's a matter of opinion and preference, but if you look just at the numbers, even with layoffs taken into account, I think US software engineers are quite well paid.

>Now compare your cousin’s yearly salary in Belgium with the average salary of a US employee doing the same job.

Take home is about the same after including health insurance and all the myriad taxes that US employees are subject to.

No, that's not true. Most companies offer at least HDHP plans either fully covered or at minimal cost. HDHP plans, by nature, have high deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums, but usually well under $10k per year. So for a typical case, unless there's some catastrophic expense not covered by any insurance, the difference can't be more than $10k per year. The difference between typical compensation for a seasoned SW engineer is much more than that, even before taking options & stock into account. In the US $150-200k is pretty common for a seasoned engineer. In Belgium, you'd look at around E100-110k from what I could find online. And I don't think Belgium has lower tax burden overall. So the health insurance alone doesn't come close to covering the gap.

>So the health insurance alone doesn't come close to covering the gap.

You're right - I was also including all the other taxes - SS/Medicare/Unemployment/State/city etc. For ex: someone living in NYC, with 150-200k would be paying a total effective rate of about 35% (breakdown of 24% Fed, 6% SS, 1.5% Medicare, 9% NYS + 3% NYC). Add in health insurance of around 6% and you're close to what EU employee would take home.

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