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Comment by marmaduke | Hacker News Reader

French salaries for postdocs and engineers in public research are fairly under average. Still we have plenty of Italians in our lab

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The Italian postdoc salaries are comparable to the French ones and there are more opportunities in France than in Italy for some Italians, e.g. those that are not in the line of succession to the throne. When I was doing research in Italy, I never met a French scientist employed in any lab.

Anecdotally I'd say that research salaries in Italy seem quite low. I did an internship together with an Italian student in Switzerland. He had a full-time offer in Italy for what was seen as a good salary. Still, he made substantially more as an intern in Switzerland than he would make as a scientist in Italy.

Living in Switzerland is much more expensive than living in Italy (housing especially), so salaries are more or less adjusted accordingly to the cost of living. Then, there are also some top Universities in Switzerland.

When I was doing my postdoc ~ 7-10 years ago, I was making 1500 euros after taxes.

Living in Switzerland is much more expensive than living in Italy (housing especially), so salaries are more or less adjusted accordingly to the cost of living.

A relative adjustment might still mean a large absolute difference, though; I don't know about Italy and Switzerland, but even paying double for a house in Luxembourg compared to an equivalent in Portugal, and not earning double, I still had more money at the end of the month.

It is correct. But saying A pays more than B and not factoring in the cost of living is not a useful exercise.

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