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Comment by Smithalicious | Hacker News Reader

These American/SV numbers are always surreal to me. I'm a CompSci undergrad in western Europe and I'll be looking at maybe €40k when I graduate, though I also don't live (and don't want to live) anywhere near The Big City.

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and €70k as a Senior engineer which is also low in comparison, but the comparison is more complex if you give value to things like medical, pension savings, cost of life and housing, kids expenses like low to higher education and even non monetary things like WLB, job security or employee rights.

Also remember that US salaries varies a lot by location

> the comparison is more complex

Is it though?

$150k+ salary seems to very much make up for all that in my mind.

I guess so, but but in much lower margins then expected

Maybe I am wrong but if I am above average for a Swede and have a relatively high quality of life then my American parallel should be rich, isn't she?

If that lifestyle suits you, you could do both: immigrate to the US to maximize your earning potential, and keep your EU citizenship for retirement and safety net purposes (e.g. major health catastrophe, …). That’s the path I took and I am fairly happy with it.

For staff+ level engineers many SV companies do pay comparable salaries in Europe. I worked for one in a smaller Scandinavian city and had a base salary of $300k and approx. $1m stock yearly. It is hard work though especially due to the timezone difference. I resigned once I reached FI.

I do agree. Frankly speaking I'd probably make more money having a small kebab kiosk than a software developer in Europe. And then they keep complaining that the US tech companies keep eating European companies for lunch.

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