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Comment by swiftcoder | Hacker News Reader

> Last I saw job offers for mistral (engineering, Paris) it advertised 90k euros base salary. Not sure how they’re intending to compete with the US when even a top AI lab can’t afford to be competitive :-/

Does the US position come with 5 weeks paid vacation? When the US position gets hit with layoffs, do you still have comprehensive healthcare and unemployment coverage?

Yes, EU software Eng salaries are a lot lower than their US equivalents, but quite a lot of folks are happy having a top 5% salary in their own county, without all the stresses and risks of working in the US.

As a concrete example, a few years back it leaked that Dan Abramov's (very decent) London salary was half what his US peers earned. Didn't seem to bother the man much at all...

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Pay isn't the main problem with Paris, it's quality of life.

Housing near work is mostly old Haussmannian buildings that are rent capped and where demand far exceeds supply, so most of the stock is unmaintained. You either accept bad housing in the city or live in the suburbs and commute — not ideal.

To make matters worse, French companies (especially old-school ones) have a culture of presenteeism for white collar jobs, it's uncommon for people to leave before 6PM and staying late is rewarded as high engagement.

Lastly, you might consider buying and renovating a house so you can escape this dilemma, but it isn't cheap: 2-bedroom (T3) around 700k euros, that represents 20 years of frugal savings on 90k gross.

Vacation, cheap and good healthcare, and unemployment benefits are great in France, but the current government has been eroding these social benefits, and those are not unique to France for well-paid tech workers anyway.

Well said, these talking points pushed by EU politicians for decades need to stop. US white collar workers have access to pretty much the same benefits than EU ones, but have a much higher after tax compensation, even taking health care into account.

And nowadays, with the erosion of the social safety net pushed by the French government, the gap is even more narrow. There definitely are huge inequalities there, US are far from being the heartless place EU politicians like to depict.

pto/vacation, healthcare, and unemployment differences between US and EU mean nothing to high skilled tech workers in the US

1. all good tech jobs in the US have unlimited pto

2. all good tech jobs in the US have good healthcare plans that will continue after being let go until you get a new job

3. you will be able to claim unemployment, but a good tech company in the US will also give you a severance

1. Does unlimited actually mean unlimited? If I want to take 2 months off every year will there be absolutely zero repercussions?

The others are valid though.

unlimited does not mean unlimited because then you would take 365 days off each year. it means you don’t accrue or worry about a balance. i work at an “unlimited” company i see most engineers taking 25-30 days of PTO. it’s a bell curve and there’s outliers on either side but 4-5 weeks/year is quite reasonable

> it means you don’t accrue or worry about a balance

The flip side of this, is that you don't have a visible balance, so you have to calibrate what is an "acceptable" number of vacation days against what your coworkers take, and in competitive environments, that necessarily tends towards zero.

Plus, when you leave/are fired, the company doesn't have to payout a vacation balance, so they laugh all the way to the bank

Well, I take about 2 month off every year. Not all at once, but a week here, week there. No issues.

I also worked in company where this guy was on PTO 6 months a year, but he kept working during his PTO, just on his own schedule. However, at the same company, I recall one coworker had to cancel his flight and company booked him another flight because "we need you to finish this pls". His manager basically beg him to stay one day.

However, in another company, I had issues taking a few days off because "your teammate been here for 2 years didn't a single day off" (I gave them my notice the same day)

So to answer your question from my experience: coin toss and you won't know it until you signed with them. I'd rather take 5 weeks for sure and no calls/emails/texts after the work day.

I'd say the Paris job provides noticeably greater day-to-day life vs Los Angeles with the same before tax salary.

>1. all good tech jobs in the US have unlimited pto

Its usually 15 days paid time off, and unlimited unpaid.

not the good jobs. not the jobs that were comparing to mistral level equivalents in the US. i haven’t had metered PTO since 2015 and everyone i know is the same

How many days do you actually take?

This isn't a rebuttal of any of your point but to give a precision, the City of Paris is absurdly small, most of the Paris Area is "suburbs". The US equivalent would be if NYC was only Manhattan, and places like Brooklyn were suburbs.

> quite a lot of folks are happy having a top 5% salary in their own county, without all the stresses and risks of working in the US.

Yes, absolutely, the problem is these are not the people you want to hire.

And the people you do want to hire are either already in US or work for a US company remotely for 3x the salary.

US companies almost always adjust salaries for LCOL. The days of them paying 3x local salaries are long past...

> Does the US position come with 5 weeks paid vacation?

It's relatively common to get 4+ weeks paid in GOOD tech jobs in the US - of which these would be considered.

> It's relatively common to get 4+ weeks paid in GOOD tech jobs in the US

I didn't have that much at either Amazon or Meta.

> I didn't have that much at either Amazon

https://www.levels.fyi/benefits/PTO-Vacation-Personal-Days/#...

Most companies start at 3 weeks + 12 bank-ish holidays (or you get unlimited - which you typically have zero issues taking 5+ weeks if you're competent and your boss isn't a dickbag). Most places also give you more PTO with tenure - Amazon does, Meta doesn't.

> When the US position gets hit with layoffs, do you still have comprehensive healthcare and unemployment coverage?

What does this have to do if the advertised base salary? You would pay for your healthcare and social security with huge taxes from that already meager salary, it is not like those 90k is all-taxes-paid-and-batteries-included offer.

> Does the US position come with 5 weeks paid vacation? When the US position gets hit with layoffs, do you still have comprehensive healthcare and unemployment coverage?

Maybe this appeal to mediocrity in a competitive market explains Mistral's mediocre performance.

I'm Australian. We have 4 weeks paid leave a year, comprehensive healthcare and unemployment coverage.

Most of my career I avoided taking leave, and I'd usually just get it paid out when I left. Who wants to take leave when you are doing the most interesting, most important thing you can imagine doing?

Maybe you need to imagine harder.

That aside, if you want to make it rational, you can think of leaves in the context of explore-exploit dilema. Probably a wider exploration would allow you to find better things to exploit. Its like the 20% innovation time that some companies offer

Come on. We're talking about a salary that is ONE THIRD of what you'd get at AI labs in US (plus the stock and the bonus). And significantly less taxes. Are you sure that 5 weeks of vacation, what you call "comprehensive" healthcare (spoiler alert: it's not), and unemployment coverage are worth 180K/year reduction in salary (pre-taxes)?

To not talk about the toxic environment that European companies generate in general. Ie: "you should be grateful you have this job".

I like how no one is pointing out that those 90k will be taxed at 50% (+20% sales tax et al) vs say 15% and no sales tax in florida

that buys you a lot of dentists visits and vacation funds

Usually the us position is unlimited pto and yes you have options if laid off

> Usually the us position is unlimited pto

Look, the year is 2026, we all understand by now that unlimited PTO is a neat trick to incentivise your employees to take as little time off as possible.

> and yes you have options if laid off

Not great options. Taking California as a concrete example, you will qualify for a maximum of $450/week in unemployment payments, and if you need healthcare coverage, you will need to spend about $1,500/month on COBRA coverage for a family of 4. This is in a region where the median mortgage payment is $3,500/month.

> Does the US position come with 5 weeks paid vacation? When the US position gets hit with layoffs, do you still have comprehensive healthcare and unemployment coverage?

Work a US job for 4 months, quit, take the next 8 months for holiday/vacation, and you still save more money than a European SWE.

Hey, the 2010s are calling, they want the trope “BuT eUrOpE hAs pAiD lEaVe” back.

Europe in 2026 (France, Germany, UK, Estonia, etc). What a joke. Nobody in the world respects them.

At least the US has jobs and a military. Not as good as before, but better than Europe.

Ah yeah, let me know about your healthcare too, specially after you quit that job. And unemployment. And public services. And scientific entities. And general cost of living. Good you have the military to spend a trillion a year in contractors.

You would pay $0 for your healthcare premiums since you would qualify for Medi-Cal

> Work a US job for 4 months, quit, take the next 8 months for holiday/vacation, and you still save more money than a European SWE.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that you have a decent software job in the Bay Area, so you earn somewhere in the region of $350k. That little 4 month stint earns you just $116k (since quitting after 4 months means you'll have to return any signing bonus).

Now in the Bay Area your median mortgage is around $3,500/month, so with modest living expenses we're talking a burn of about $5,500/month, meaning you need to spend about $66,000 to cover the year. Plus $17,000 in state and federal taxes, you're now down to a cushion of 33k/year.

That's assuming, of course, that you are happy sending your kids to public school in a dodgy district (private school fees alone would wipe you out, as would the mortgages in a good public school district).

The math doesn't math here chief

You clearly never have worked in Europe. The mindset here is completely different.

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