Ask HN: Why do companies outside the US pay so much less?
As a developer, I've found that it's just not worth it to respond to tech companies / recruiters seeking engineers, unless they're based in the USA. Companies based anywhere else, in my experience, expect to pay less than half the rate that US companies will pay.
Why is this? There are possible causes having to do with tax rates and culture, but has anyone really looked into it? How big a contributor is this (rather than, say, immigrants as percent of total population, or university quality) to the fact that the US has Google and Apple and Facebook and Twitter, and the rest of the world has… JustEat and Spotify?
224 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 272 ms ] threadThe US has a higher cost of living than most other countries. Those who are comparable pay somewhat more competitively with US jobs. This becomes really clear with remote work. Outside of the major tech hubs, the pay for IT drops off to comparable levels with European companies.
We have a culture that doesn't require a business degree to open a business that investors would take seriously. As a result, companies pay highly skilled IT employees more to keep them happy enough to not start up their own business.
There is more direct competition between deep pocketed firms for talent. High demand always skews the price, and it is faaaar easier for the US firms to hire US based workers.
Traditionally, the US had been the only place to get any form of quality IT. The training programs and college degrees are more established.
We also see that many of our outsourced maintenance IT jobs may be done cheaper, but they are often worth far less than what they charge. That negative impression reinforces the stereotype of US based IT professionals are more competent.
Not sure that I agree with that! Compare to the UK, I don't think this is at all true. Compared to say, India, then that was definitely true.
Now part of my experience is with a multinational manufacturing company not an IT company. That likely makes a major difference.
This is partially true but I thought the cost of living in Europe was generally higher than in the US.
Or it assumed to be on top of your salary?
Yes.
Sounds like Janitors are being paid more in SV.
Thats why someone wouldn't start a coal mine near SF.
People are only going to be paid up to the point where a company still makes money from them. This has a high ceiling for software devs, a low ceiling for janitors.
I think there is also not as much of a general tech talent shortage in Europe, so it's not one of the most in-demand jobs outside of specialized areas (if you're a top deep-learning expert right now, yes, but not for general programming / SE jobs). Many European countries traditionally have very strong STEM education, in a number of cases actually overproducing highly skilled graduates in the field relative to the local industry's needs (which is why you see a lot of Spanish, Romanian, Greek, Italian, etc. STEM graduates working in other countries). Not quite as badly oversupplied in the "T" part of STEM as in the "M" part, but still, not a shortage.
edit: Oh, another factor, for right now, that I should've mentioned is that the U.S. dollar is much stronger against the Euro and UK pound than it has been historically (even compared to a year or two ago), while salaries don't respond that quickly to currency movements. There are still significant differences if you use circa 2015 exchange rates, but smaller.
America just has more highly paid jobs, because we've got some of the biggest companies and highest GDP per capita in the world. And this has the effect of creating a greater spread of income. It's a bigger, richer, pond.
Not quite, it has the 18th highest. Below Hong Kong, Switzerland, and Ireland all who pay less for engineering.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_regions_by_GDP_...
In any case it's a stretch to make an apples to apples comparison when you have 2 magnitudes of population difference.
Just because a country has a smaller population it doesn't make it unsuitable to live or to compare economic data.
There's a big difference between countries that above the US (top 18) on that list where there is a 10x to 100x difference. 1x (US) to 4x (China) does not a magnitude make.
Even given that I would concede that the U.S is a lot less populous country than China. Additionally, there's a lot of places where comparisons of stats are invalid because of that difference.
And what income inequality is really measuring is just the mix of jobs. If you have everyone working the same job for the same amount, you'd have 0 income inequality. It's when you have a different mix of jobs that are valued differently that you get income inequality. America has a different mix of jobs, which changes our income inequality in comparison to Europe.
I think that the best way to explain the differences in software compensation is in supply/demand factors. The limited immigration, weak STEM education, businesses understanding the value of software, and inefficiencies with outsourcing makes it so that software developers can command a higher salary in the US because there's both reduced supply and increased demand.
So yeah. That's my problem. I think that there are clear supply/demand factors that explain the difference in compensation, and income inequality is the measure of a system, it is not an input variable.
As a comparison: I am a programmer with above average pay in Germany, my mom works upper management in a big company.
I make about twice as much as a steel worker and she makes twice as much as me.
The same jobs in the us would pay about 3-4 times a steelworker for me and triple to quadruple my pay for her.
This.
I'll gladly pay more (as in earn less) to live (and to raise my kids) in a more equal society. I grew up in a very unequal one (even though it had universal healthcare) and I was really tired of that.
I always like to point out that even the most junior developer can automate a task and save a company hundreds of thousands of dollars.
They get so much because they'll be somewhere else instead. A race to higher salaries started at some point in the past and it's still going on. It's a difficult bubble to deflate until there are more jobs than people that can do them.
Why are software engineers' salaries so much higher in major US tech hubs than everywhere else?
What an engineer is paid in Columbus, OH, is very different than what they are paid in San Jose, CA.
My guess is the existence of outlier companies in these places that force salaries up. You have a number of large companies that make serious revenue-per-employee that demand the best (see: Google, FB, Apple, etc). Their bottom lines support paying more to hire from the top of the pool, and so they do, and over time the averages move due to this effect at all levels.
One of the defining things about these other job markets that pay considerably less, is the lack of major employers that are able to, and willing to, participate in this kind of price war with other employers. Some do not require top talent, and therefore there's no particular need to get into a bidding war with anyone else. Others simply can't afford to - since their revenue wouldn't support Bay Area-styled salaries.
A lot of US jobs, you're lucky to see even 2 weeks of PTO, and even then, if contracting, you don't see that. I wound up taking about a month and a half off due to a bad relocation/project cut experience last year, and that has a huge impact on your hourly/annual salary. The culture is just different and the tax models very different.
In the US variety in income taxes at the state level, or cost of housing can vary a lot and you'll see similar variance in IT/Developer pay as well.
I think there's a large variance in the US as well between different geographical areas. I would expect you can find x2 differences even within one geography.
There are a lot of factors in play:
- In SV there's a lot of "easy" money and a shortage of people.
- There's a lot of friction preventing this from equalizing. Immigration policies being one example.
- There have been significant currency movements over the last couple of years and those take some time to reflect back to things like prices and salaries. The strength of the US dollar means that at least temporarily you make that much more if you work in the US.
- Cost of living. If you have to pay more to own a house, pay for your kids education, commute, health, etc. then you can expect upwards pressure on salaries to make up for that.
- Risk premiums.
I think it's important to realize that these things can take a while to play out. When I look at today's salaries compared to 10 or 20 years ago I don't actually think they're very high but that's against a backdrop of erosion in other middle class salaries. Time will tell.
The US has more companies that can see how to make more money off tech talent.
I believe you're referring to the ration salary/cost_of_living rather than comparing difference currencies, countries, politics, taxes, etc. In this case, I'd say that the ration is fairly even, minus stocks/bonuses. The base salary puts you in a similar spot in terms of buying power in your respective country if you're a software engineer. That's the beauty of this job... you can work anywhere in the world and maintain roughly the "same" buying power.
The cost of housing in Vancouver, Canada is right behind New York and San Fran. I don't think wages has anything to do with cost of living. In general I think Canadian investments are less risk tolerant, the market doesn't shift as fast as it does in the States, and therefore less cash flow. Also, its in the employers best interest to keep salaries down and convince their employees that living in Canada (Vancouver instead of San Fran) is better (how ever you define better).
Also, its in the employers best interest to keep salaries down and convince their employees that living in Canada (Vancouver instead of San Fran) is better (how ever you define better).
Yes, especially true. I've yet to see any Canadians who have actually received a raise in recent years. No one talks about it and no one knows whether their salary will be increased to at least meet inflation. It's a little messed up.
The northern European countries are more geared for industrial conglomerates, as is Japan, and I have no clue what they do in southern Europe, but it's not investing in software development.
Other factors in Europe is probably as simple as historically less divergent incomes, less incentives for higher salaries due to higher and more progressive taxes, and a lower demand for really skilled developers due to the industrialist mindset that is hard to shake.
Very risk adverse. We've had to resort to roadshows down in California and New York to try and get US capital.
I think USA provides a good environment for companies where most other countries look after people first. One result is that people with skills that make money for companies will have above average salaries. The downsides of the American way are well documented.
It's a lot of the same companies, e.g. Google, Microsoft, Amazon, so I don't think we can say the can't pay as much. Other than that it's market forces.
And as far as I know the big companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, do pay more than market salary in Canada. Their Canadian offices are not nearly as large though, they don't influence the wages/benefits culture as much as they do in the States.
So in "real" terms, e.g. purchase power of your salary, Canadians are paid reasonably well compared to their US peers while at the same time it seems there's a lot less inequality. Throw in free health, free education, vacation, severance, etc. and it's not such a bad deal for Canadians employees. At the same time their employers get all sorts of benefits for operating here. SRED and other programs. A more reasonable immigration system. Win-win.
They all make their income in the U.S.; all revenue is made in USD. They discover that the most senior positions in Eastern Canada pay $80-90k CAD per year, with $45-60k CAD being made by juniors. These companies take advantage of our economy to pay on average well below $50k USD per developer.
It has nothing to do with cost of living. It's entirely based on the currency exchange. They also gain back a huge percentage of their employees' salaries by lying through their teeth to government-backed programs, meaning they actually pay < $30-40k/year USD per developer. It's actually disgusting. The executives at these companies are laughing all the way to the bank.
For specific predictions from this model:
1. Public-sector programmers in general should get paid less than private-sector programmers, due to employees valuing the job security
2. The public/private gap should be larger in the US than in Europe, since there's a smaller job security gap
3. Public-sector programmers in the US should have higher wages than public-sector programmers in Europe, due to having to compete with more vigorous private-sector activity in the US
The US companies paying double what everyone else does could be caused by them having the capital and ROI to do so. But, I don't think so. Within the US, why do so many tech companies open shop in SV. They value the culture and team and integral parts that lead to success. They want top talent. Even when they hire out of the US, they don't want to subject the project to the risk of failure by being cheap and hiring cut rate developers.
There's also a culture of paying sticker price. And perhaps, price ignorance. We know what things cost locally, but we aren't the best judges of knowing what a top developer should cost if they're based in another country. Maybe we pay them 75% of local rates and that's still 2X what they would get paid from a non-US company, we don't really know.
Hollywood is the biggest city in the world for acting, followed by New York, and maybe Vancouver is in third place. I'm pretty sure people working as actors in any of those three cities are going to be paid more than actors working elsewhere, because there's greater demand in Hollywood/NYC/Vancouver than there is Omaha, Nebraska.
The biggest cities for software are San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, New York, and Austin. Probably not in that order anymore, but that's where most of the action is. If you're not working in one of those places, you're probably not making as much because there's less demand in your area for software people. All of these cities are in the US and none of them are in Europe.
It's a little more distributed: http://www.gameindustrycareerguide.com/best-cities-for-video...
I'm surprised SF comes up so much still. Isn't the rent an existential threat to the industry?
Plus, I imagine that many of those studios may have gotten their start before things like Unity and Steam made it possible for anybody with enough time on their hands to make and publish their own games very inexpensively.
I would love to see salary vs cost-of-living comparisons globally. I suspect this might account for the disparity, but I'm afraid I don't have the data to confirm or disprove this assertion.
Update: Spent 5 minutes googling with no luck. Found some moving company (?!) sponsored data showing most of the EU having a very high cost of living. Makes me wonder if that takes into account free-or-cheaper-than-US health care, child care, transportation (owning a car is $$$), education (most US tech workers are paying a high student debt "tax"), and other lifestyle/political differences between the two regions.
http://www.bamf.de/EN/Infothek/FragenAntworten/BlaueKarteEU/...
> Holders of an EU Blue Card can enter another Member State without a visa after 18 months and apply for the EU Blue Card of that Member State within a period of one month.
And it looks like Americans (at least for now...) can go to Germany before they're even approved:
> Exceptions apply to nationals of Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand and the United States of America. They can enter Germany on a visa-free basis and can apply to the competent immigration authority in Germany for their future place of residence for an EU Blue Card within three months of entering Germany.
And while it's nice to learn the language and all, the NL has among the highest English competency in Europe. It's rather difficult to learn Dutch because English is so useful and prevalent.
https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=13522661
The rest of the standard-of-living costs (food, toiletries, etc.) would be vanishingly small, but housing would still be a big deal.
- That your stay here is temporary, you will be priced out within a few years, and any lease renewal could be the one that necessitates a cross-country move.
- That until you reach that breaking point, your "anything but housing" budget will decrease rapidly as rents rise much faster than wages.
It's a fun thing to do in your early twenties when your only worldly attachments are a backpack and a laptop, but people are not AWS spot instances. I do not intend for my eventual children to be scheduled onto communities preemptibly.
Owning is desirable because even if the payment is a stretch, it can get no worse, so barring catastrophe, your life is indefinitely sustainable. Renting in any volatile market is a bad idea if you're looking for a stable, long-term home rather than a short-lived adventure. Of course, there's nothing wrong with doing some adventuring while young and single.
Rent - generally - never goes down, you have no tax breaks, and you have no asset.
There are many lifestyle reasons to rent but few financial (in the US).
My yearly rent is twice what the property taxes alone would be on the condos across the street. I considered getting one of them, but after doing the numbers, it didn't make since. After interest, taxes, maintenance, and HOA fees, there's no way these people are coming out ahead until they've been there 10+ years.
It's all well-and-good that some of that is tax deductible, but the standard deduction on a couple is still more than taxes+interest on a 250k loan. So it really doesn't matter unless you have many more deductions.
Now go from the mid-west to a west coast boom city, and you'd be a fool not to buy.
It's not the cost of groceries that count here, it's healthcare, education, housing and pensions that can easily consume $100-150k more per year than in a German town of comparable size.
If you only look at salary - tax rate, the US is far and away better, but as soon as you start to factor in other things to get a real net income it goes to the German side pretty quickly. If you calculate out for 20 years (especially if you want to send kids to college) it's not even close. Moreover, we have a relatively high income and if you more in the middle or lower tax brackets, the values you get from services vs what you pay into the system would be even greater.
From what I see (commented here and elsewhere), many, many people do not have an accurate idea of what their actually paying and making over time. The easiest thing to compare is salary numbers, but it's also the most flawed because net income minus taxes is only the start of a real calculation not the end answer. You should also take into consideration the non-monetary things that come with living in each place as a more qualitative list (this will, of course, differ from person to person). As already mentioned vacation is lengthy and it's expected that it will be taken (and people really try not to bother you while you're away), lower anxiety due to less crime and a better social safety...
Slightly off topic, but I would highly encourage people to make projections like this for their households. It could be eye opening and I've found that is has a very positive benefit on long term goal planning and budgeting.
Unless maybe I should start looking for my next job :|
Of course you'd then have to live in the US, which is a downside.
https://data.oecd.org/germany.htm https://data.oecd.org/united-states.htm
If you scroll down to the Economic indicators, you will see that on average people in the US work around 1.700 hours a year, whereas people in Germany (and many other European countries) work only 1.400 hours. This alone can already explain 20 % of the wage gap between the two countries, and in fact if you look at the average salary per hour worked, it is almost identical (32 USD), which would support this theory. In addition, many things like education, housing, social security and health insurance are much cheaper in Europe, which leads to lower salaries (as they tend to follow the cost of living). Furthermore, regulations in Europe are stronger than in the US, which makes it more difficult (or sometimes even impossible) to fire people once they have been employed for some time. Hence the risk of losing your job is smaller, which should lead to a lower salary as well as companies face a higher risk when hiring someone, and employees have less risk.
And in extreme tech hot spots like SV or NY there should course be an additional effect due to the high demand of skilled IT professionals and the fact that people can usually find a new job very easily, which also makes it easier to negotiate a higher salary and forces companies to pay above average rates to attract talent, which is a self-reinforcing effect.
You're not encouraged to rely on public unemployment insurance - the standard financial planning advice is to save and maintain 6 months of expenses in a liquid account.
If the public retirement and unemployment systems in other countries are actually sufficient, so you don't need to fund a private cover for them, that's easily 20% more ready cash.
You'll get Social Security benefits after retirement for as long as the SSA is around. It may not be the exact that dollar your employer is putting away for you now, but you'll get back something.
It is a trade off, that's all there is to it, e.g. If you, God forbid, have get into a severe health condition in the US, you might very well be making 5x more, you're still going to get broke pretty soon because social healthcare is virtually nil.
Chances are they are already covered by their employer though.
The lack of "affordable" healthcare really isn't a concern for the six figure tech worker class - those salaries imply quality health insurance as part of the package.
I think it's short-sighted to say that the lack of a social safety net is of no concern to a well-paid tech worker.
Isn't it? Let's do the math... A leukimia treatment drug that is virtually free in most advanced European healthcare will cost virtually 0 USD/year.
In india the same drug might as far as 2.5k/year. In the USA the same drug (patent hold by Novartis) costs 70k/year.
Let's say you are living in SF. You get paid anywhere between 80 and 120k/year at a top IT company and you have to give 70k/year away: 120-70 = 50k. Are 50k/year enough to live in SF, Silicon Valley or the Bay Area?
I really do wonder though, since there's zero guarantee in the US that one would remain employed through all of this.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/04/why-chemo...
Each place has their pros and cons.
SV can still pay much better than France, but you don't get the ease of mind of working in a system that takes care of you if you're less fortunate or can't do your job anymore at some point.
Despite forecasts I think in 5 years the USD is likely to fall back again.
If you want to get a better idea of specific compensation at tech companies, check out https://www.transparentcareer.com
We collect data in native currencies as well. Full disclosure, i'm the founder, but if you have any specific questions about data in other currencies i'd be happy to pull information for anyone who asks.
If you're a foreigner, working for a company in your country of origin, compared to an American company, offers the following benefits:
1) The right to work in the first place - getting an American visa is rather hard 2) Not needing to pick up your life, your family's life, and move far away from extended family and friends 3) Work in the same time zone - have a job during normal work hours, without an expectation to show up to meetings late at night 4) A work environment where most communication happens in your native language
Most development salaries are pretty high compared to the median salaries in the surrounding region, they're just low compared to American developer salaries, but few people abroad make American salaries, so people tend to be happy with their "I'm upper-middle-class compared to the people around me" salaries. And since American jobs aren't really under consideration, for the reasons listed above, foreign employers don't feel the need to boost salaries even further, to a level comparable with the US, since the labor pool doesn't apply for jobs with those salaries.
Hip areas are expensive, but say, Staten Island is cheap af.
As a software engineere in germany you are earning good money.
There are no killings in cities, affordable health care, high quality living standards, university costs 150$ for 6 month, no donald trump, 30 days real holiday (i take them, everyone does, every year), seldom over hours, parental leave.
Btw. IT is more than google, apple, facebook and twitter.
And no we do not have anywhere in germany rent prices like in NY or in SF. Perhaps, only, if even in the middlest of the centere.
I think it's a bit insane that a lot of companies in USA doesn't allow parental leave, pressure employers to don't take any vacations, etc etc
You do have countries where salaries are high like Switzerland but you also have insanely high living costs.
This is not a German miracle, its simple demographics, most of the Germans are in their productive years of 40s and 50s and their population in teens and 20s is tiny, so their investments are low even though at per-capita level they look tremendous. This is the reason why Germany's hope is automation. They are demographically not in a great place. of course, this will come home to roost in 20 years or so.
[edit] Demographics link: http://www.indexmundi.com/germany/age_structure.html
If they still wanted to, they could turn on the migration spigot at anytime. Plenty of brilliant engineers and scientists to pick off out of Eastern Europe, Iran, etc. Labor has already come in on its own.
If you are from a foreign country and come to Germany to study in the universities, you also pay only that amount. There is a lot of diversity here nation wise in the universities. Education is considered a human right.
Also, the fact that education is free isn't really related to demographics, in fact University education has always been free, and the only attempt to introduce a (very moderate) tuition fee in 2006 was fully reversed a few years later due to pressure from various organizations.
I suspect in Europe and the UK in particular engineering is seen as a lower status profession - may be less so in Germany
If you're young, healthy, and your family doesn't have a history of cancer or heart disease, Germany's health care system might be a good deal. It's one of the best in Europe and, like the United States, people travel from all over the world to receive treatment there.
But you will want to move back to the United States when you get older. Per capita Germany performs about half as many MRIs, CT scans, c-sections, coronary bypasses, or knee replacements as the U.S. And, if you're over 65, you have very little value to the public system. Doctors will merely manage your pain rather than work to extend your life regardless of your age like they do in the U.S.
Germany has a good health system and Germans enjoy a life expectancy comparable to Americans but it's a system designed to please the young, healthy taxpayer. For me, a few extra vacation days and some beer in my youth aren't worth getting surprised by late-stage cancer or suffering with a bad knee when I get old.
Side note: More Americans need to know about Long-term Care Insurance. It's super cheap if you buy it when you're younger (50's) and it'll save your family a fortune when you get old.
1) https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/cancer-spen...
And, yes, I do mind.
Heck, if even getting checked up might be a big spending for low earners I wonder how many people die without being correctly diagnosed.
You actually have to afford the operation for cancer for them to give it to you - up until it becomes and emergency, anyway (this actually happened to someone with cervical cancer I knew). If you are lucky you can beg around and get it. It doesn't always matter that you have insurance, as a lot of folks can't afford it.
My father had trouble affording insulin and at one point stupidly cut back, which was after he gave up anti-depressants and my mother wasn't seeing the doctor for other things.
If you don't have money, the american system is cruel. I'd much rather deal with the waiting times than to suffer due to lack of money. At least there is hope, and I no longer fear getting sick and winding up homeless because of it.
A lot of the current pressure is a combination of that chronic underfunding and the chronic underfunding of social care. We don't need more beds, we need better social care to allow us to use the beds we have more efficiently. (Except we do need more beds. In the last six years there's been a reduction of 1 in 16 acute beds and 1 in 5 MH beds).
It's a weird situation because UK gov spends less per capita on health care than the US gov. If we increased spending on certain things - social care; early intervention MH services; better drug and alcohol services - we'd save so much money.
Some thoughts I don't necessarily have answers to:
- is the lower occurrence of these procedures due to a lower need? Maybe wider-spread healthcare throughout life means overall people are healthier and need less procedures later on in life. Maybe these procedures are over-performed in the US and not necessarily under-performed in Germany (patients like having tests done and receiving medication, doctors/labs happy to do so because it is profitable, etc; for example, nowhere in Europe will you see "ask your doctor about XYZ drug!" advertising and antibiotics are much less commonly prescribed).
- there may indeed be a cultural/philosophical difference in approach to end-of-life care. Is it right that life should be extended at any cost in the US? Is this something that's available to someone who is poor and has basic or no insurance, or is it only available to someone wealthy or with an exceptionally strong insurance plan?
(I think we should measure virtue by carbon footprint/chance of horrible death/crime/etc and not by GDP.)
You probably aren't going to do so well with a start-up in rural Mississippi or Indiana, mostly because folks don't have much money to spend on your wares, yet in some other areas it'll seem like they are doing well. Same thing with Europe. There are a lot of countries and economies and different regulations there and it is quite hard to compare with the overall thing.
That said, I think the USD is propped up in ways that others are not due to its status in the world. They'd an advantage for some, certainly. And Euro is weakened by rest of EU, if Germany were standalone their currency would be higher than now.
In my opinion, saying that if Germany were standalone they would have a stronger currency is the same as saying "If California were standalone they would have a stronger currency".
The US has its Mississippi, Europe has its Greece.
It's on purpose, part of the plan.
I mean yeah if you ignore all the people shooting up malls, attacking people with machetes, driving trucks into crowds etc, Germany's a really peaceful place.
If you can be bothered to go back and re-read my last comment, you'll notice I never once mentioned guns or even expressed a passing interest in comparing gun death rates.
Why the heck do i have to read such stupid comment @hn? Do you really mean this or did you just use it as a troll counter argument?
I have amazing dental, health, and eyecare. Free routine health checkups such as physicals, heck I even get a free gym membership. I drive a 350HP luxury sedan. Oh and I've never shot anyone, had to shoot anyone, or been the victim of a crime other than petty theft where my car was broken into one time. But I do have the freedom to participate in shooting sports (and I do) whenever the heck I want and I don't need to ask mommy for permission.
If that's not high quality living standards, you must make 500k a year and be rich because I don't know what is. I think your media has drastically altered your perception of what America is and is not. Tech workers are well compensated and I'd rather be making six figures in America. I'm sure your country is very nice as well, but there is not enough freedom.
You're doing well for yourself, but aren't you also presenting an altered perception of America? Very, very few people in America are as fortunate as you.
It is actually the people who complain about having no job prospects, who don't have health insurance, and who can't afford a car that are the minority. Americans with jobs, healthcare, and cars are definitely the majority. I would even say the vast majority. Maybe a lot of them have 10k-70k in debt, and there are plenty of problems, but let's not act like America is the equivalent of a third-world country.
I do have it too, albeit the only one I pay for is the dental one - but more importantly, the barista at my favourite coffee shop has them too. At the same quality level.
> Free routine health checkups such as physicals,
My doctor calls me to get those done. They chase me! for free! but more importantly, they also chase the barista guy :)
> heck I even get a free gym membership.
Incidentally I do. I don't think the barista does. Gym fees are between £10 and £30 around here. Of course you an always splash out for David Lloyd's and pay 12x that...
> I drive a 350HP luxury sedan.
I either cycle 10 minutes or take a bus for 15 minutes. Why would I need a 350HP luxury sedan? I am already wasting money having a 170BHP Alfa Romeo hatchback parked in front of my house 24x7.
> Oh and I've never shot anyone, had to shoot anyone, or been the victim of a crime other than petty theft where my car was broken into one time.
Same here. Even better, I don't even think about it. Even better, as anyone is allowed to free healthcare there is less desperate people.
> But I do have the freedom to participate in shooting sports (and I do) whenever the heck I want
You can play shooting sports. My uncle does it regularly. Part of my family are actually hunters.
> and I don't need to ask mommy for permission.
Please, don't be disrespectful.
> If that's not high quality living standards, you must make 500k a year and be rich because I don't know what is.
Those are everyone's quality standards in great part of Europe. You are missing the point.
> I think your media has drastically altered your perception of what America is and is not.
Oh, our media - and I thought we all read TechCrunch, Gizmodo, CNN, BBC, ...
Luckily we have you to open your eyes. THANK GOD.
> Tech workers are well compensated and I'd rather be making six figures in America.
Good for you, but I am making six figures in Europe. Anecdotal data is anecdotal.
But even better, the guy not making six figures has free healthcare too.
> I'm sure your country is very nice as well, but there is not enough freedom.
I guess your freedom to play shooting sports (which you can in Europe too) is more important that your freedom to get free or affordable healthcare should you be in a rough spot.
You are privileged, I am privileged. However, I might not be who I am without free healthcare, cheap public nurseries, free quality schools, almost free universities, ... All paid by taxes of those who can, for those who can't. Remember you can be in one of those groups today and in the other tomorrow.
Well, you have a 10 minute bike ride to work. In America, because of the size of the country, and the culture around bicycling, very very few people bike to work. A lot of people commute 20-30 minutes by car, because they live 8-20 miles from their work. So you don't need a car, especially a nice one. If you spent an hour in the car every day going to and from work, you would probably see the value in a nice(r) car.
I think it's safe to say tech workers are well compensated in both places, which was my point. The OP was acting very arrogant as if American tech workers didn't have healthcare, vacations, etc.
> You can play shooting sports. My uncle does it regularly. Part of my family are actually hunters.
I think you're deluding yourself. No offense, but I don't need to justify my gun ownership through the guise of "hunting" like you do in Germany or other European countries. I don't shoot animals, only paper and steel. I like guns so I own them. Also you would be outmatched in gun competitions such as 3 gun races simply because you are not allowed to purchase modern firearms like AR15s. You will just tire out faster than the guy carrying a 5LB AR15.
> You are privileged, I am privileged. However, I might not be who I am without free healthcare, cheap public nurseries, free quality schools, almost free universities, ... All paid by taxes of those who can, for those who can't. Remember you can be in one of those groups today and in the other tomorrow.
Agreed. Let's see how well your system copes with the refugee crisis. I'm eager to see if "those who can" can really feed the mouths of all the refugees. A number of important litmus tests for our modern society are taking place in Europe as we speak. A positive outcome might tip the scales here in America.
Well, I do think the potential salary difference is not worth it; and the reasons are what I've stated in my reply.
> I think it's safe to say tech workers are well compensated in both places, which was my point.
They are, agreed.
> The OP was acting very arrogant as if American tech workers didn't have healthcare, vacations, etc.
Well, they rarely have healthcare at the same level you can get in Canada, Spain, UK, etc - which is given to any worker in those countries. That is my point :)
They rarely have paid vacation, too.
> I think you're deluding yourself. No offense, but I don't need to justify my gun ownership through the guise of "hunting" like you do in Germany or other European countries. I don't shoot animals, only paper and steel. I like guns so I own them. Also you would be outmatched in gun competitions such as 3 gun races simply because you are not allowed to purchase modern firearms like AR15s. You will just tire out faster than the guy carrying a 5LB AR15.
You play gun sports, I told you can play gun sports in Europe too. It's a thing - not just "hunting" (seriously?:)). Good for you if you like to shoot AR15s.
> Agreed. Let's see how well your system copes with the refugee crisis.
Funnily enough, the US is not part of the refugee crisis yet your government is freaking out more than anyone. Food for thought.
> I'm eager to see if "those who can" can really feed the mouths of all the refugees.
It is possible. It has been proven in Germany of all places.
Funnily enough, the US used to be the receiver of refugees. Germans, Italians, Irish, Polish, Hungarians, Cubans, ... And it worked well.
> A number of important litmus tests for our modern society are taking place in Europe as we speak. A positive outcome might tip the scales here in America.
And we will prevail.
> I think you took a negative tone to my post when it was not meant that way.
Then go onto say:
> I think you're deluding yourself. No offense, but
Sounds like the negative tone is continuing.
On another note:
> I'm sure your country is very nice as well, but there is not enough freedom.
What exactly are Americans free to do which we cannot in the UK?
The American dream seems to be more viable in Europe where the difference in pay between the top and the bottom is less severe and social mobility is higher.
You counter argued nearly every point but not about my 30 days holiday every year and the overhours. Why?
I know several developers who have tripled or quadrupled their after tax income, without having to work any harder.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36882445
This is what they are talking about; not terrorist attacks which are sporadic.
However, that's not the discussion. Wouldn't it be more productive to say "how were american engineers able to get so well paid, and how can we emulate that in Europe?"
As for the pay, a lot of it goes indirectly to Quality of Life. You might not be paid as much, but benefits are generated in other ways.
Here in the US, if you have money, you can have a great QoL. Conversely, if you don't, well, you won't. Personally, I think I might like living in the EU (maybe The Netherlands), once I got over the culture shock.
One commenter brought up the killings in the US. It's not like there's killing all around you every day - it's spread out over a very large geographical area. The USA Death Panels work to ensure that the killings are distributed according to an arcane metric that no one understands.
However the really STRANGE thing is that only a few USA companies exploit that by hiring EU devs for remote working. (ie: paying only 30% of a USA salary for an almost as good developer)
You can't compare the entire EU to one of the most expensive cities in the world - in spite of what the media may have you believe, most people in the US don't live in San Francisco or New York.