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Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

As European, I'm usually astonished about the massive salaries that IT companies pay. When taking the rent into account, though, then it's a vastly different picture - I'd even say that in some of the mentioned areas the renters will have less income after rent and taxes than I have in Munich, Germany's 2nd expensive city.

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Same impression (from Brussels, Belgium). + as a freelancer, it's actually quite possible to get rates in Brussels that are around 80% of what you can get in California (500€/day is totally possible).

For the record, for the rent of a 1 bedroom appartment in SF, you can get a 240 square meters house in the center of Brussels.

For the metric impaired, that's about 2400 sq feet, which sounds like a king's palace and in the center of the city to boot!

And I forgot to mention that it is to pay a mortgage on the house, not renting it. (Renting would be a bit less expensive).

Others consider programmers underpaid, even at these salaries. This makes some sense when considering that Google has a revenue of around $500k/employee (saw this number a while ago in a comment, don't remember exactly which one).

Germany is pretty great for rent and general cost of living in some lovely cities. London is probably even worse than San Francisco, though.

Which companies pay that, though? I just spoke to a company in Hamburg that was offering me about 1/2 what I'd make in SF after calculating the cost of living difference and conversion to USD.

Another thing to remember is that US salaries are also quoted before taxes while I've noticed European usually quote income after taxes

In which European country did you see salary after taxes? In France is usually before taxes.

There's also the issue that there's not just one group of taxes: there's what your employer pays, and then there's what you personally pay. In at least France and Belgium, salaries typically include the former, but not the latter; whereas in the US, most people get their employer to withhold towards their personal taxes.

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