> Salaries for professionals are markedly lower, we live in much smaller houses etc.
This is an age old debate, and it's very hard to compare one vast continent to another. Regional differences between US cities and European cities are at least as large or larger than the difference between the avereages of US and European salaries/living standards etc. The difference between central manhattan and rural Apalachia is just like the difference between the fancy parts of Stockholm and rural eastern Europe. There is just no comparison in Salaries, Life expectancy etc.
When it comes to those of us that are "winning", the difference is there, especially for some professions like doctors who can basically make a killing in the US but not in Europe. That is probably to do with that it's an economic risk/investment to get the MD in the US, whereas in Europe it's normally free. When you are a finished doctor you aren't entitled to a fancy car - we just paid your MD so you better get to work and be thankful ;)
To make a fair comparison between me (a software dev) and a comparable person in the US (in a similar metro area of ~1M people) you'd have to make a pretty tricky calculation involving costs of healthcare, childcare, money saved for retirement, pensions etc. On the bottom line I think the US person would make a bit more money, but on the other hand would have a worse work/life balance.
A software engineer in a startup in berlin earns maybe a median salary of 60k euros ayear at a 40% tax rate. Thats less of what interns make in the us at a 30% tax rate.
An experienced engineer at google or facebook make 200k with a sizable signup bonus. As far as I know, theres no comparison between what a soft dev makes in the us and what he makes in europe.
This is from someone that lives in south america, and is considering moving to either europe, NZ or America, and hands down america pays so much more than anything else.
Not to mention that people criticizing work-life balance of engineers in the us havent visited google offices.
You're comparing median salary in Berlin with the high end in the US, and you are ignoring much of the complexities that were already mentioned such as the incredibley high cost of living in San Francisco where google and facebook pay those salaries.
I'm in the Boston market and median salary for devs is around 80-90k when you include all skill levels, but every single dev I know has roommates or an hour+ commute into the city and higher healthcare costs than Germany.
I'd believe that you would make more overall money in the US once you got to the higher end of the market, but it's not as simple as a calculation as you are making it out to be
Berlin is a start-up hub, and its a place i know. I cant speak for Zurich from first hand experience.
Im just emphasizing that the fact that europe has benefits, it does not necessarily (or likely) outweigh the difference in salary from one to the other. You are certainly taxed more by a lower wage and by a higher tax rate that could compensate ubering every day and private schooling.
That's the point everyone else is making, yet conanbatt keeps coming back to comparing salaries between Berlin and San Francisco as an example of higher salaries in the US. Berlin is not even the highest paying city in Germany, let alone Europe.
I'd go as far as claiming Berlin is a very low paid place in Europe. Living costs and standards are quite low here compared to Munich or Amsterdam. You'd earn 50% more there for the same work.
This generally won't solve the commute issue; you spend time driving, parking, on the train, walking/subway to work area. And then all of that in reverse. You still 'lose' 50+ minutes each way.
Do you not have student loans? A few people in my social circle managed to get out of college without them through parents paying/scholarships and they have a much different calculus than the majority of us
I know several devs who are within a few minutes walk of a commuter rail and still deal with the hour+ commute. The best I've seen is my own 12 minute walk I had for a few months but the job didnt pay nearly enough for the rent in the same area and I had to move on to a new job, or if you get the reverse commute, but those are uncommon
If you end up choosing the US, and go to an at will state, keep in mind that your employer can fire you for wearing the wrong color of socks, even if they never told you which color is the right one (no, really). I think it boils down to whether you want to take care of yourself, or if you let the state do it for you. I would definitely take the 60K if it includes awesome public transport, unemployment money, affordable healthcare, a month of holidays, and having free time in the evenings for hobbies.
> If you end up choosing the US, and go to an at will state, keep in mind that your employer can fire you for wearing the wrong color of socks, even if they never told you which color is the right one (no, really)
I live in a country where you have to pay insurmountable amounts of money to fire employees. The salaries that us pays are about 8x. Gimme at will employment.
> I would definitely take the 60K if it includes awesome public transport, unemployment money, affordable healthcare, a month of holidays, and having free time in the evenings for hobbies.
I had plenty of free time in SF to do whatever i wanted when I worked there. Maybe i was lucky, but i did not find work-life balance to be particularly out of whack. Europe is more relaxed, but also less ambitious in terms of culture. That can be frustrating as well.
> I would definitely take the 60K if it includes awesome public transport, unemployment money, affordable healthcare, a month of holidays, and having free time in the evenings for hobbies.
You are paying for all those things, its not like they are free in europe. You can also pay for them in the US on software engineer salaries. Google has ample pto, facebook has parental rights, etc. You can always take unpaid time off, something easier to do in the US than in other countries.
> your employer can fire you for wearing the wrong color of socks
Adding restrictions on employer's ability to fire makes employers far less likely to hire. It enriches the already employed at the expense of the unemployed. If anything it makes more sense to have at-will employment in countries with strong social safety nets because unemployment is less disruptive there.
If you end up choosing the US, and go to an at will state, keep in mind that your employer can fire you for wearing the wrong color of socks, even if they never told you which color is the right one (no, really).
Getting new hires up to speed is expensive enough that they'd be pretty stupid to actually do this. Sure a few do, but it isn't common.
Also, a couple minutes with google turns up this: https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=AVD_DUR . If it says what I think it says, getting a new job really is easier in the US (like it should be, because as any economist will tell you this is what has to happen when a bad hire is less of a disaster for the employer).
I think it boils down to whether you want to take care of yourself, or if you let the state do it for you.
In part, yes.
But also, there are two approaches to reducing downtime. You can increase MTBF (make things more reliable, make it harder to get fired); or you can reduce MTTR (make things easier to fix, make it easier to get hired somewhere new). Europe goes with the first approach, the US goes with the second (which I very much prefer, because it doesn't gum things up).
Separately, there's also making downtime less of a problem (failover systems, all the various other social safety net things). The US is generally known to kinda suck at this.
It's not all of Europe which has strict laws about firing people. For an example, the Danish concept of "Flexicurity"[0], where the state protects the worker against the financial trouble of getting fired, but not getting fired itself. Of course, this tend to lead to a rather high tax rate.
>Getting new hires up to speed is expensive enough that they'd be pretty stupid to actually do this. Sure a few do, but it isn't common.
I believe the point they were making is simply that they can. You're not protected (aside from the small handful of reason that actually are protected).
Oh please, no. Please don't "improve" work life balance by making work more "fun" a la Google. I don't want to have "fun" at work, I want to have plenty of time off work to be with my family.
"Not to mentioned that people criticizing work-life balance of engineers in the us haven't visited google offices."
Google and other tech companies in the U.S having nice offices doesn't mean the work life balance of Googlers is something to envy. Probably the opposite actually (three meals a day makes you stay there for dinner, nap rooms to let you stay even later). Not a great work life balance.
Source: know Googlers, have been to Google offices
As far as I saw, the ambiance was pretty relaxed, and there were plenty of benefits like gyms, music studios, hardware shops, etc to delve into hobbies. Im sure there are people working 12 hours a day, and im sure the vast majority barely work their 8.
> An experienced engineer at google or facebook make 200k with a sizable signup bonus.
I think Silicon Valley megacorps are exceptional outliers. Obviously people can make silly money at Google, but so do athletes in the largest leagues. It's just not a useful comparison between continents with millions of employees. Exclude the top 10% and bottom 10% makes for a more reasonable comparison.
A software engineer in SF is also paying somewhere around 400% more for housing, and 100% more for everything else than a software engineer in Berlin. Quite an important note when comparing salaries.
Higher costs, lower stability, and no safety net... I think that I would prefer that Berlin salary (and I'm a US resident).
Cost of living is always important to consider. Looking at this site[0] for a ballpark figure, it would seem that someone living in San Francisco needs to be earning at least the double of someone in Berlin, to afford the same standard of living. San Francisco is still a very attractive place to work as a Software Engineer, but it's not as black and white, as the huge difference in pay might make it look.
Software engineers most of the time get fed by the company and i distrust, at least with my spending habits, the cost of consumer prices like clothing or gadgets being cheaper in europe than in the us.
Housing is the main difference: you can get a fairly large place in berlin, and you can have a family there. But SF is one city, there are pleny of other cities in the us more family friendly (if not any other city).
I remember recently a map showing the purchasing power by salary per state, and the biggest purchasing power was nebraska.
Take living costs and so forth into account also. California probably isn't as great at the figures suggest.
That said, speaking as a New Zealander: don't come here. There are no jobs, and if you find one, you will be underpaid. If you're looking for the weather and standard-of-living combination offered by the southern hemisphere, consider Melbourne or Sydney instead. Very few of my graduating class at the University of Auckland will end up remaining in the city, I suspect.
I mean, there are jobs generally, but not really in tech. I was slightly exaggerating to say there are 'no' jobs, but in reality the NZ tech industry is not very mature.
If people leave, normally they leave for Australia (because it's very easy to do so).
I can not have aging grandma nor children in google offices. I can not engage in personal hobbies that are not company sanctioned there. I dont have privacy there.
As a former Googler who was involved in comparing pay across Google sites, Zurich was on par with Mountain View in gross pay (and ahead of New York), and after-tax pay was markedly higher in Zurich.
While Berlin is a great city, it is very far from being a top-pay city in Europe.
After tax pay better be higher in Zurich... it's one of the most expensive cities to live in, especially as an ex-pat, in the world (and considerably more pricey than SF.)
I was in the London office (until a year ago) and led an engineering team spanning London, Zurich and New York. The majority of Google Zurich's engineers are not Swiss—elsewhere from Europe, from across Asia and many from the US.
This is related to one of the least favoured policy changes Milton Friedman wanted to make: remove medical licenses.
There are plenty of tasks doctors are commanded with that do not require mastery level of expertise, and that enormously raises the cost of medicine. You dont need to study 10 years to read an EKG, someone could learn all the EKG patterns in a much shorter time.
A funny story about this in argentina: anesthesiologists earn more money than surgeons. Surgeons are not unionized, but anesthesiologists are.
Surgeons and anesthesiologists in Argentina. Is a famous trade quirk here. I think surgeons cannot unionize by law, but anesthesiologists can, but im not sure about that.
While we're correcting misconceptions, in the UK it's most definitely not free.
But I believe it's still a lot cheaper than the US. The universities are capped on the fees they can charge, and your student loan is regulated by the government (you only start paying back when you're earning over a threshold).
Yes, I'm Norwegian and moved to the UK, and it was a shock to see "US conditions" in Europe, and took a lot to get used to, even though the UK still have a lot of protections and welfare systems the US doesn't.
(to the Americans: In many European countries "US conditions" is commonly used in political discourse as a way of scaring voters with the image of chaos and suffering)
Shades of grey though; not entirely black and white. In the UK->Norway direction, it's surprising to have to pay to visit a doctor or specialist, not to mention paying painful retail price for medicines, even for children. (Yes, I know there's an annual cap etc., but still seems a bit weird compared to free-at-the-point-of-use and a flat prescription charge in the UK.) No NHS dentistry either. (Yes, I know NHS dentist availability is not what it once was in the UK! And there are subsidies for necessary children's treatment in Norway depending on severity.)
I mean, we're talking about Europe as whole. The UK has the highest maternity though paternity is much worse but still better than quite a few EU countries.
The new (2015) UK rules are more generous, but still not the "highest in the EU" (c.f Sweden's 480 paid days). Swedes also don't need to take it at full rate meaning you can e.g make it a 2 year leave with lower pay. That might be possible in the UK too.
Typical Nordic is 12 month maternity + 6month paternity I.e until the child is 18months.
Even though I'm swedish I did go to Scotish uni (Strathclyde!) for a while. It was probably paid for by magical EU funds though. I do remember registering and my peers talking about student loans but I thought they were like my student loans (which were for rent, food and books) and thought almost all tuitions were paid by govt. grants, not loans. I know at least a part of my friends had grants, not loans, paying their studies at least.
What is the political situation now in the UK wrt. free higher education? It seems like one of the biggest social justice/social mobility issues a society can have. Is that not a top issue for Labour?
In Scotland at least, student loans are only used for living expenses, similar to your experience. Tuition fees are paid by the Scottish Government, as education is a devolved power [1].
In England, tuition fees are paid by the student, usually through a student loan, and are capped at £9k/year.
[Warning: political] I couldn't answer on Labour's priorities. They're becoming increasingly irrelevant north of the border, and increasingly impotent south of the border.
Personally I'm surprised that there isn't a lot more anger from English taxpayers about this. It would be very interesting to see whether an independent Scotland could continue this policy.
I hope they are angry; at their own leaders for failing to provide the same, and not based in some misguided theory on Scottish subsidies, which is a far more complex issue than many tabloids would have their readers believe.
I'd imagine, without putting much thought into it, that when you compare salaries, and then account for how much more is paid in taxes in (most) European countries, then at least parts of the comparison can get voided - like retirement savings or something of that nature.
If you're working as a professional in the US it's pretty rare that your health insurance isn't at least mostly paid for by your employer, if not completely paid for by them.
But like you said, that's why it's a tricky calculation.
All of which varies if you're single or married with children.
I'd imagine that for the young and healthy people without children, it isn't hard to sock away more in the US.
>is just like the difference between the fancy parts of Stockholm and rural eastern Europe
It's really not - in the EU the difference between median net income in say Norway 41 483€ or Denmark 28 364€ and Romania 2 315€ and Bulgaria 3 332€ - that is over 10x differences between poorest and richest countries. US doesn't have that level of disparity between states even if you count Puerto Rico.
That may be true but you should really compare purchasing power rather than raw disposable income (I still think what you say is true, but not as exaggerated)
This is an age old debate, and it's very hard to compare one vast continent to another. Regional differences between US cities and European cities are at least as large or larger than the difference between the avereages of US and European salaries/living standards etc. The difference between central manhattan and rural Apalachia is just like the difference between the fancy parts of Stockholm and rural eastern Europe. There is just no comparison in Salaries, Life expectancy etc.
When it comes to those of us that are "winning", the difference is there, especially for some professions like doctors who can basically make a killing in the US but not in Europe. That is probably to do with that it's an economic risk/investment to get the MD in the US, whereas in Europe it's normally free. When you are a finished doctor you aren't entitled to a fancy car - we just paid your MD so you better get to work and be thankful ;)
To make a fair comparison between me (a software dev) and a comparable person in the US (in a similar metro area of ~1M people) you'd have to make a pretty tricky calculation involving costs of healthcare, childcare, money saved for retirement, pensions etc. On the bottom line I think the US person would make a bit more money, but on the other hand would have a worse work/life balance.