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Comment by ThePhysicist | Hacker News Reader

The biggest companies here (e.g. SAP, Zalando, etc.) offer around 50-70 % of equivalent US salaries including stock options, from my experience, at least for the top people. Given that you have way more time off (usually at least 30 days plus 10-12 public holidays), very regulated work hours, great social security and healthcare and very affordable public services like Kindergartens, schools etc. I have to say it seems less and less attractive to move to the US, at last if you have family. As a 20-something year old single it's probably still a great opportunity though.

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As a european this is simply not true. The number if well paying tech jobs in Europe is miniscule in Europe and they are usually region locked to few cities let alone countries.

US gives you freedom. Europe locks you to a country and culture you don’t necessarily want to live in.

>>Europe locks you to a country and culture you don’t necessarily want to live in.

I'm European and I don't feel that way at all - the very opposite in fact. Care to expand?

If the big companies have offices in Amsterdam and you're not Dutch, you'll have to move there but basically never be considered a local, even if you learn Dutch.

....and? It's literally true everywhere in the world. I've moved abroad 13 years ago, obtained citizenship of another country, settled here, but I still wouldn't call myself local. Why is that a problem, and why is this in any way shape or form "limiting" in moving across Europe? The truth is you can move to any country any company incredibly easily with an EU citizenship, and yet OP finds it "locking" in some way, and I was curious what they mean, because in my opinion and in my experience it's the exact opposite.

We are comparing US single market vs EU single market. It's EXTREMELY difficult for people not in IT to move across Europe. Many of us have spouses or family in professions which cannot easily be done in different EU countries due to the language limitations. That can easily set you back years in your career or force you to learn a language YOU DO NOT WANT TO LEARN.

Another aspect is local culture. Europe is still INCREDIBLY centered around national cultures despite people trying to be more open. A lot of X-nationality are still acting according to stereotypes and it's incredibly hard to stay in such country longterm.

Part of being happy is to live in a welcoming, happy place not just money and amazing infrastructure.

I have a life in country A (house, work, wife ..etc). My opportunities are limited to companies having LLC in my country or B2B contracts.

If I were to accept a job in country B I would (in 9/10 scenarios) need to move to that country and adjust to the local culture and language.

I had a friend with korean wife who was in Germany and then Belgium each for couple of years. The whole family was suffering from the constant need of adaptation to local languages and eventually they ended up going to Canada.

What European companies offer $200k+ salaries (which is about 60%-70% of a senior eng salary)?

PS - US developers get all of those benefits too, so you're just taking a pay cut for no reason. Not so attractive to me.

See above, the biggest tech companies are competing for talent globally so they match offers with a discounting factor of 40-30 %, if you're a good candidate. Sure if the US is your thing I guess it makes sense to live there, for me quality of life in western Europe seems just way better, probably just because I'm used to the way things are here (walkable, safe cities, great public transportation, dozens of beautiful destinations within 4-8 hour driving or 2-3 hour flight duration, great food quality, ...). Also family ties and friends, seems not great to permanently move halfway across the world without good reason. I've spent significant time in the US and I enjoy it, just wouldn't want to live there permanently even if earning twice as much. Money isn't everything, at least for me. Everyone's different.

Sure if Europe is your thing, you should live there.

Just don't make specific claims which are not true. Europeans earn lower than 40% for the senior positions. e.g see google salaries[1]. Google pays good but is not the top of the league. Send me a page in Europe with 60% of those salaries.

[1]: https://www.levels.fyi/companies/google/salaries/software-en...

I know plenty of people that were recruited e.g. from AWS, Google etc. to come back to Europe, the big companies here don't match the salaries 100 % but 60-70 % is not unusual, otherwise it would be hard to convince people to come back.

Sure if you're a run-of-the-mill university graduate with no particularly valuable skill set you won't be able to pull that off, but if I remember correctly in the US it's also not guaranteed to get into these companies. So not sure what's not true, do you want to say you believe there's no single software development manager or principal engineer at SAP, BMW or Zalando that earns in the range of 200-250 T€ including stock options? People don't share their salaries here on US platforms as much as in there so the data in levels.fyi is not very useful, but there's e.g. DATEV which has more detailed salary data (as they provide the tax software for most companies) which you can get access to, that shows a strong bimodal distribution with "regular" salaries and salaries for "exceptional" employees.

> What European companies offer $200k+ salaries

erm... none? the "sky high" threshold in major EU cities is 100k EUR. Zalando and SAP mentioned by OP might pay above 100k but only in Munich or Frankfurt am Main.

Salaries or total compensation? As a senior SDE you can definitely make 150-180k TC in multiple European cities for FAANG, even outside of Switzerland.

There doesn't exist stock options or vesting share programs at companies listed on European stock exchanges. I gave up even asking at some point.

They do pay above 100k€ in Berlin for talents.

Yes but then I would need to live in Berlin (shakes uncontrollably).

Must be surreal experience earning 100k EUR and living in aparthotel for years.

Berlin apartments are pretty high and large. The aparthotel experience with very high income is something I’ve seen in NYC, not really in Germany.

Edit: though I wouldn’t trade our current Hamburg flat, 2 floors, balcony, office room, for below 1300€/month, difficult to leave such a place!

Yeah there is always this one smart person with very old rental contract. Let me quickly travel in time a grab something in Berlin for EUR 600. Good luck next time you'll end up scanning the apartment listings.

It’s not an old contract, only 2 years old at this point, it’s cheap thanks to a Genossenschaft. Buy yes we’ve been lucky, I would be glad to see more people benefiting from Genossenschaft, it’s a fantastic system.

Edit: I moved 5 times since 2015, across 3 countries, I know how horrible and difficult it is to find flats, even more in a place where you’re not speaking the language or know the culture. I never pretended it was simple. I’ve been refused flats for absurd reasons such as because of my foreign last name (like, explicitly), or because I was working remotely before it was considered acceptable.

Last time I was looking for a rental in Berlin the norm was to be ghosted after submitting paper portfolio with full professional, financial, and credit info.

Yeah, it’s a real pain. Lots of application to send, lots of visiting all across the city, lots of printed form to fill over and over again with the same info you already sent. We had the same experience in Hamburg the first and second times, you first need to find something temporary just to be able to visit places, then spend weeks going through the whole process.

Did you have a better experience in Munich or Frankfurt? From what I heard Munich is also its own mess when looking for flats. No idea about Frankfurt (I just visited once and loved the place but don’t know people living there).

I see this as a plus personally, it’s a wonderful place, I loved my time there

I like fresh seafood you like doner kebab. Everybody has its own preference.

Fair enough :)

I eat vegetarian, but yes I love Berlin’s falafel dürüms!

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