As a EU citizen who no longer lives there, in part because of the poor salaries, I can't say I'm surprised by the EU 'brain drain'. The EU published a paper on this in 2024, about how they are leaking talent because the high-talented individuals by and large don't stick around.
Not just salaries, the other issue is regulation and moving slowly.
To add to the not-so-great salaries, there are high taxes and social fees + VAT of round 20%…
OTOH, the typical/mean competence in SW seems relatively low if compared with high salaries countries.
For example, as I was hiring last year, it was just impossible to get a candidate that have even heard about functional programming, or anything outside Python and C.
A friend of mine was hiring EEs, and the best one he found (hold to your seat!) said an inductor is to resistors in series.
There are exceptional good people, but they seem to bot be free in the market.
I work in Germany and my colleagues are all competent. Maybe the difference is that competent people are hired very early (before they become very competent?) and then tend to stick to the company that trained them?
Oh oh hold your horses. That is TAX, above TAX in Germany you will have to pay "social loads" for health, pension fonds, church, etc... You get to keep much less than that!
Even when in UK is the same, you still have to pay the TV-tax, VAT 19%, fuel prices are high because of gigantic taxes, all of those do not exist in USA.
Also in Germany public health is getting more expensive (there was an increase of 1% this year) and worse (although still good). Also education is getting more expensive slowly.
Salary difference isn't because of tax (employer NI contributions in the UK are high - £12,500 for £100k, but employer healthcare is high in the US)
The assertion was that employee taxes were high in europe. Now they may be in mainland, but in the UK that's not particularly true, not at 100k range anyway.
On the California median salary of $67k, in the US you keep $51,915, in the UK you keep $51,741, practically the same.
At $500k, in California you'd keep $287k, in the UK $279k, so 3% difference there at the 8-times median CA wage, I'll admit that.
At that salary though the employer contribution to tax in the UK is significantly higher than healthcare contribution in the US, so sure, probably around 10% difference in total.
There's basically no difference in income taxes between the UK and US, that doesn't explain the massive salary difference.
Gotcha, sorry, missed that that was your point.
Agreed, the taxes issue is kind of blown out of proportion. I'd rather pay more taxes and have good (/ cheap) healthcare and education to be honest.
Either the pay you offered was too low or your recruiters didn't do their job. Multiple functional languages have been created in Europe, there is a big and competent Rust (which is not exactly an fp language, but is not Python or C either) community etc.
> Multiple functional languages have been created in Europe
Which ones? just out of curiosity, because is totally irrelevant for the discussion: The car was invented in Germany, and for long years the best cars were German, but right now the industry is falling down non-stop... So there may be many people inventing whatever languages, when you search people to program, you just do not find good candidates.
I'm not arguing that people in Germany does not know functional languages. I just say, if you search somebody, is hard to find. The pay was damn good 80k/year. I was in a company in south Germany, maybe that is the difference?
Check levels.fyi. Comments say it's skewed upwards, but that's what people working for international companies with respective skill set get. Employment is not marriage, people are always ready for a change if you offer conditions better that what they have. You wouldn't find a graduate in the US for this money.
And I bet you are on site or at most hybrid, so are restricted to people living in your city if not town/village.
> And I bet you are on site or at most hybrid, so are restricted to people living in your city if not town/village.
Yes absolutely. That is why I said it was in south. That is a big problem. I know for a fact, that in Berlin there are much more good SW devs. but here around they are scarse.
Oh, I missed that part. Berlin has experienced a COL explosion recently, so not sure how easy it is to find a good engineer for 80K. Dresden would do probably, but south is also crazy expensive AFAIK.
I'd love to make more money, but if it requires moving to the US, I am instantly much less interested. Not that I consider myself particularly high-talented.
As a EU citizen who no longer lives there, in part because of the poor salaries, I can't say I'm surprised by the EU 'brain drain'. The EU published a paper on this in 2024, about how they are leaking talent because the high-talented individuals by and large don't stick around.
Not just salaries, the other issue is regulation and moving slowly.
EDIT, the doc I referred to: https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/97e481fd-2dc3...