HN Explorer

Ask HN: Best companies to work for in Europe?

86 points by jxub ↗ HN
We all know about the big4/unicorns in the US. But what about companies in Europe with interesting work, good pay, and sane work/life balance? They don't have to be one of the "top" tech companies, just good places to work. Thanks for the answers.

83 comments

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hakanito
In Scandinavia you have minimum of 25 days paid time off every year, by law. So work life balance is sane by default unless you work the cray hours at Banks or McKinsey et al. In tech you have some big players in different countries. Spotify, Klarna, iZettle are some Swedish examples. Check out the Rocket Internet portfolio companies, Zalando, Trivago, EF. Google and Facebook are still top of the line even in Europe
troels
Just to clarify. You get ~15 national holidays. On top of that 6-7 weeks are normal. (At least for Denmark)
Symbiote
Denmark has 11, which sounds good, except they don't move if they fall on Saturday or Sunday. The are all on Monday-Friday this year though, which is nice. (They're also mostly in the spring, when the weather is unreliable. Can we get Easter permanently moved to August?)

For comparison, England has 8, but none are on weekends, they're all either Monday or Friday. For a Monday-Friday worker, it can work out about the same.

DrinkWater
Rocket Internet companies? Trust me, you definitely do NOT want to work there.
piva00
Pitching in that at Klarna you get 30 days off (so +5 from the minimum 25).

So far a very good company to work for, very smooth relocation process from Brazil, decent to good pay and quite often I work only between 9-16 or 9-15, no one bats an eye as long as I'm being productive and delivering what's needed.

Symbiote
The minimum, mandated by the EU, is 20 days. Several countries have their own, higher minimum.

Professionals are often given one-two weeks beyond the minimum.

Working hours are as important as paid holidays. Working ~40 hours a week is normal (35, 37½, 41, it varies by country), although in some sectors working longer hours is more common.

There is a list on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_b...

scribu
I'll just comment on the "good pay" aspect:

The vast majority of European companies pay programmers significantly less than US companies (even when controlling for cost of living).

So, your best bet, financially, would be to work for an American company, while being outside of the USA. Most of the giants have several offices in Europe.

charlesdm
Your best bet is to work remotely for a SV based company, receiving US compensation. There are a few people I know who do this, and they easily gross €10k+ per month.

Or you become a contractor on a day rate, but then you're not really permanently working for the same company.

troels
Long term contracting is not much different from 'permanent' employment. But it does come with slightly less safety net (e.g. essentially you can be fired at-will)
eb0la
Contractorship in Europe is very different from one country to another. Not just for laws and regulations; but rates differ a lot, too.

In the UK you can easily find contractor gigs for 300-400GBP daily rate. 500 is not uncommon for some roles; whist in Spain 250-300 Eur is the absolute maximum.

If interested in contracting check Jobserve, and itjobswatch uk first before setting your own daily rate.

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StavrosK
That is extremely hard to do, though, as those jobs are rather rare. I do agree that it's the absolute best if you can pull it off.
tw1010
The fact that they are rare might only mean that few people know and search for it. The probability of getting it conditioned on the fact that you're searching might be a lot higher.
StavrosK
I'm saying they're rare conditioned on the fact that you're searching for them.
Asdfbla
Wouldn't the company have an incentive to pay you European rates for your remote work then?
charlesdm
Not if you are good at what you do and they are looking for talent. Second, any self respected software developer would probably reject an offer where a company knowingly does this.
tw1010
Don't you need a visa to work remotely for a SV company from Europe?
bdukic
Of course not. I'm not sure why would you even think that.
seekingcharlie
Why do you seem so certain of that?

I live in Germany, work for an SV company, and a work visa in Germany is absolutely required.

bitL
No, there are multiple options. If you are a contractor is one way, or an own Delaware LLC that is used for invoicing, you just need to hire international tax accountant to be good with both US and your-country-of-tax-residence's tax offices.
pm90
Visa's are by definition documents providing authorization for (re)entry and specific kinds of work. If you're not inside the country's geographical boundaries, you are not in their jurisdiction and hence don't need a visa.

Now, taxes though... that's a different beast.

charlesdm
Easy: you invoice from wherever you're based. Exempt from tax in the US, taxed in your home jurisdiction. Expenses tax deductible.
danesparza
Please forgive my ignorance: What is the 'SV' abbreviation referring to here?
bitL
Silicon Valley, area between San Francisco and San Jose in California, USA, North America.
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petters
I think this is true. In Stockholm, Google pays engineers much more than native Swedish companies (it seems).
DyslexicAtheist
after 20+ years in the game both in APAC and Europe, I have to disagree here.

Yes you get a lot of competition on entry level roles. The opportunities for engineers working as experienced consultants is massive in Germany and Switzerland incl some North European markets (not going into these locations due to my lack of experience and what I perceive - a high tax burden).

In most places (except Eastern EU) you can easily make EUR >200K/year and never be out of work. You have to register as a freelancer and learn a) what your service is and b) how to invoice that.

Though even you don't think about that (at all) and simply hire yourself out to whoever has a gig you probably can charge above €70,-/hrs (for some simple SW development). You have to maintain good relationship with agencies or find your own clients (I started out finding my own clients because all agencies demanded freelance experience regardless of my experience as an "employee", later I worked mainly with agencies to focus on my core skills and not worry about procurement, finally I created my own agency which I ended up regretting :D).

Quick start: go to www.gulp.de (sorry in German) and extract every agency who advertises through them, spam these agencies with your CV and let them know you're available within 30 days. Have enough references and if it's your first "gig" know how to avoid the question "do you have any experience as consultant" like the plague.

If you register as freelancer remember you have to pay your own taxes and healthcare. A good rule of thumb for how much you should charge: take the avg salary for a full-time/perm role in this domain and double or x2.5 it. You need to be able to live comfortably by working 8 months out of 12 (risk-mgmt: if you are suddenly out of a project - though in all the years this never ever happened to me). You need to deduct your healthcare (in Switzerland / Germany it is very low ~300 upwards for a good plan), social security: put away 30% for retirement. Any expenses (car or costs for transport that includes the leasing rate on your new BMW, Tesla or Porsche) is an expense provided that you use it for work most of the time (talk to an accountant which you would have to anyway to do the taxes for you at year end. costs €600-€800/year).

Things to avoid in Germany/Austria: agencies that promise you a full-time gig but contract you out to their clients as a freelancer. You would not believe the sh1t I have seen in this space. The system is called "Arbeitnehmerüberlassung" in German (and specific to Germany) which borders on modern slavery.

If anyone needs guidance feel free to send me a DM on twitter.

DyslexicAtheist
for completeness sake: some of the worst rates I have seen offered were from agencies in Belgium, France and especially the UK. While you can get good gigs in the UK for a decent rate the number of agencies there competing on price is huge (and the agencies are known for aggressive pricing). The result is jobs that are offered in Germany for an undisclosed amount (and you learn during the interview the pain threshold is 90,-) in the UK you have the job-spec telling you to that the budget is €50,-

Stay away from bad agencies! (actually the risk of not getting paid is higher when directly working for a client and if an agency stiffs you for the fee then something really terrible is going on)

expertentipp
> agencies that promise you a full-time gig but contract you out to their clients as a freelancer. You would not believe the sh1t I have seen in this space

This is a plague in post-Communist EU countries. They provide defined-term employment contract and an Eastern European salary. The clients in DE/UK/US treat you like a disposable Angular- or React-whore.

mamon
I'm not sure which post-communist countries you're talking about, but at least in my country virtually every job offer gives you a choice: full time employment or self-employment contract with daily rate. And for your employer/agency it usually does not matter which one you choose. For you it matters because self-employment get's you 30-50% higher salary, thanks to lower taxes and social security payments. And daily rates in self employment are usually around 250-300 Euro (for senior roles), so you can almost match Western European salaries.
DyslexicAtheist
I'm currently living in Eastern EU (actually one of the cheapest of all the Eastern-EU markets) and there hardly are any jobs to begin with. The "good" people here know their value and all have left the country so sadly there is a massive brain drain.

There is a huge difference between bringing added value as a consultant that sees a new environment / incl all its challenges, every 3-6 months, and those remote workers peddling their service on upwork.com / freelance.com. Those who sell only their coding fall into this category while those who sell their know-how will be way above that rate. If you want to compete on price (and always stay there work via upwork & Co) but if you want to separate yourself from the rest some legwork isn't optional.

Just because somebody is a freelancer and writes an invoice (to the same client) every month doesn't add value to most clients. And so this doesn't get anywhere near the rates you get if you carve out your niche and name for yourself. If you work with 2 or 3 agencies w/ changing clients every 12-18 months then you are already in a sweet spot.

slavoingilizov
You ignore the value of all benefits you get from full time employment. The 30-50% salary is not that rosy in reality. You're assuming that you don't contribute to a pension, pay out of pocket for every expense if any, additional cost of transportation, gym membership etc. Many full time employees get these by default. So you're over-simplifying and distorting the size of the difference. In addition, self-employment has an added cost to do all admin (accounting, tax returns, communication and negotiation, etc.). The devs I know hate that, so you're just getting more money by doing extra shitty work (from one perspective at least). Apples and oranges.
mamon
Accounting and stuff costs you around 40$ per month, so that's negligible. Gym membership? that's maybe another 40$. Not to mention that you get tax credit for those, and other business-related expenses.

Pension plans are all government-sponsored Ponzi schemes, so I wouldn't count on them anyway, but if you insist then paying your own, private pension fund is hell lot cheaper than state-owned one.

The only significant downside of self-employment is that you can't get paid vacation so easily, but still it is possible to negotiate some.

All things considered, the only thing that could force me to sign full-time employment contract would be a gun put to my head.

bitL
In Germany you have to master at least C1-level, preferably C2-level of German, which is a huge time sink (3-5 years of studying). Only then you would be accepted for positions/contracts >100k, even if you are a world-class person smashing code/deep learning/etc. like crazy. I'd recommend anyone that doesn't know German on such level to avoid both Germany and Switzerland; you'd probably be better compensated even in Romania as I've heard. Avoid UK in any case, they don't value techies at all and salaries there are just jokes. Try Norway/Denmark for better luck or make a Delaware/Nevada LLC and do your business in the US while residing in Europe.
DyslexicAtheist
agree on the German requirement that can be hard. Though I have contracted out many times Americans and Brits to my clients. The biggest difficulties I have had placing foreigners were Munich (anywhere in Bavaria), and Stuttgart (strangely). Best places to place foreigners were Berlin (start-ups in Berlin often have no money to even consider well paid consultants) but there are some firms (Soundcloud & Co) who I am aware have some real international rockstars on their portfolio. Well funded Berlin based start-ups are well positioned to hire from the same pool as Apple, Google & Co.

In case of Switzerland I think it is similar: Switzerland has one of the highest rates of foreigners in their workforce in all of continental Europe. The options there are limited (if you're in Banking, Insurance you should have no problem around Zurich/Zug and even work on some exciting blockchain stuff) Other areas in CH would be security (both start-ups and well established mobile operators looking for experts). The typical SaaS landscape is too small both in CH and in Germany to compete with high traffic platforms from the US (some small "regional champions" excluded).

You can certainly find something in both Germany and Switzerland (even you don't speak German) provided you have the skills.

raverbashing
> I'd recommend anyone that doesn't know German on such level to avoid both Germany and Switzerland; you'd probably be better compensated even in Romania as I've heard.

I just love these completely unfounded assertions

You work for a company that works in English as many exist and get paid a regular salary. A lot of people do that, your claim is baseless

bitL
Sure, but if you want to fight for better positions at BMW, Daimler-Benz, VW related to machine learning/Big Data, they won't even talk to you unless you know at least C1-German. If you want to work for 2nd tier companies, they are often desperate, so English is sufficient, but compensation is even lower. But don't expect to be promoted on merit; German-speaking employees will have massive edge over you unless you are an international superstar.
raverbashing
Then get a 2nd tier job there and learn German in the meantime
[dead] s3nnyy
>Yes you get a lot of competition on entry level roles. The opportunities for engineers working as experienced consultants is massive in Germany and Switzerland

Also, entry level is paid well. If you want to know more about Switzerland, here a blogpost I wrote 4 years ago and which is still valid today: "Eight reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in tech" https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-t... (disclaimer: I am a founder of a tech recruitment agency and we look for tech talent all over Europe who want to join Swiss companies. If you look for a tech job e-mail me at iwan@coderfit.com.)

sampo
> European companies pay programmers significantly less than US companies

The European system assumes that you don't need to pay healthcare, your children's daycare and education, and pension savings from your salary.

It works is you live permanently in Europe. But of course working a bit in Europe while planning to move back to US for raising a family can be a bad deal. Then again, for young Europeans working for a while in the US and then moving back to Europe to settle down can be a great deal.

herbst
> The European system

Thats not a thing. In Switzerland you pay healthcare yourself to a private company as well. As well as most of your pension savings are on a private contract. I am also certain Childcare needs to be paid out of your own pocket in nearly all countries around here. Except you are thinking of "Kindergeld" (Children Money) which adds a little to your household if you have children.

You also would profit from all of it while you are here and just cash out (most) of it when you go again, i dont see why this would be a bad deal.

TL:DR; You just generalized europe for whatever reason.

sampo
You are correct, Switzerland is a bit different than most other European countries.
herbst
Its not about Switzerland only tho. The whole laws around social structure, taxes, remote work, are not unified at all within europe.

There are countries where your arguments are completely true (Germany for example i would guess) but others already are different enough to make them invalid again (Austria for example has no paid childcare, and healthcare is force deducted from your wage and usually even more expensive than in Switzerland)

I just like to enrage about phrases like "european system" :)

To avoid triggering phrase nazis like me talking about the "EU" instead of "Europe" often makes it more correct :)

newbear
What's jobs in europe pay more? Are considered more valuable/prestigious?
scribu
I don’t think there’s any kind of software job that’s prestigious by itself. There are a handful of individuals that are famous within their circle, but that’s about it.

Regarding salary, a job pays more to the extent that: a) it needs to get done and b) there are fewer people able or willing to do it.

Examples:

* web development - high demand (every business needs a website), but also high supply (relatively easy to learn)

* security - low demand (except after a breach), arguably lower supply (pentesting isn’t everyone’s cup of tea)

* machine learning - high demand (at least from startups), low supply (need advanced knowledge of statistics)

sancha_
The big car manufacturers in Germany are great to work for. Albeit most of them are not in big cities if that is where you want to live.
netsharc
Huh? BMW is in Munich, Mercedes is in Stuttgart, Ford is near Cologne, all count as big cities in Germany. They're definitely not sleepy villages.

Ok, Audi is in small-ish Ingolstadt, VW is in Wolfsburg...(but they also have a factory in Dresden).

bkcreate
But that's just the HQ you might get sent to a smaller factory town (Rostock/Bremen/etc.)
simfoo
Engineers at Volkswagen and its other brands (Porsche, Audi, Seat, Skoda) are paid quite well compared to other industries in Germany (only two others come to mind, finance and chemicals). Software engineers can realistically reach up to 80-90000€ a year, plus bonuses (although only with experience, newcomers start at around 50-60000€).

Although most of the innovation in the automotive sector still comes from small and large suppliers (like Bosch or Vector for example). A software and platform centric approach to functional development is only just coming to the big OEMs (BMW or Audi are very active in AI)

bitL
Only if you do machine learning (140k EUR) or Big Data (110k EUR). German C1 is often a must; EEU citizens not welcome.
[dead] suchjobswow
And by great you mean, meh.

It's not even funny how boring those jobs are. I'd take an outsourcing job in eastern Europe anytime, rather than spend one more hour in the German automotive industry.

cabify_talent
Cabify in Madrid is definitely one two watch! Recently acquired unicorn status and experiencing an exponential growth rate, last year alone the company grew by 500%! ;-) Also imo, they pay well and offer great challenges to work on.
jxub
Do you offer remote work or internships in summer? I'm based in Valencia at the moment, but I'd love to chat
eb0la
Madrid nightlife is also a plus. Don't forget that ;-)
troels
You probably know, but Europe is a pretty diverse place. Salary in the north is significantly higher than the south. Labour laws and cultural expectations wrt work load etc. also differs quite a lot.
barrkel
Fintech. If you like data - manipulation, transformation, joining, matching, analysis, display etc. - it's interesting enough. The closer you are to the money, the more money you'll probably make, but the culture will be more conservative too.

We're hiring, btw - https://du.co/careers/

d--b
Big cos in France don't pay very well (although time-wise, you can fairly easily get 4-day work weeks and / or 9-week vacations).

If you're looking to make more money, finance is an option, though they will make you work harder (not crazy though) or consulting.

American companies do employ people in Europe too.

vmuhonen
I've been working at Mobiquity here in Amsterdam for a couple of months now and it feels really nice place. Can't say many bad things about A'dam either. Like others mentioned, the pay isn't on the level you get from the big US companies, but I do like the quality of life here.
mickeyben
I'm completely biased but Drivy (https://angel.co/drivy) is an amazing place to work for. Located in central Paris with interesting problems, good pay (relatively to Paris not to SV) and no absurd work hours.

Ping me if you want to know more.

greyman
You need to take into account the country, not just company... I worked for a German company, which paid 2K eur in Slovakia (average salary for a dev), but 4K for the same position in Austria.
expertentipp
I don't know why companies take for granted that employee in PL/CZ/SK/RO should earn 50% less while being treated worse and having more work to do. Interestingly employees in these countries prefer to undermine and treat like shit each other for 10% payrise (infamous middle-management/POs/PMs/Scrum lunatics over here), instead of doing something about the overall situation.
greyman
The company I worked for didnt treat us worse, and it was basically the same amount of work. Only the salary was much lower. But the real difference is less than 50%, since living expenses are lower in Slovakia than Austria.
AlexAmee
Yea totally !

But I had a very interesting situation once. I asked one of my clients if it's ok for him, if I move to Croatia for some time, he tried to convince me that it's his right to pay less since I don't need as much as in Austria.

So I assume that he basically thought: "you don't need that money since everything else is cheaper and you earn more than the average person in Croatia"

I mean if you think about it, the average salary in Romania is like 450 Euro's ? Now imagine a dev living in Romania with 4k Euro's each month, working for a company in Germany.

I'm not saying that they are right, all I'm saying is that I understand their thinking process ( even if it's totally BS )

They next issues: probably taxes, there is a reason why we got hourly rates like 90/hour, our taxes are killer, if you have good rates, you can be sure that you will lose 50% on taxes, while in other countries it's not like that.

Compared to Romania ( low flat rate 16% tax ), this is insane[0].

Long story short, they try to figure out the cost of living and based on that, that's what you get.

[0] https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/work/taxes/income-taxe...

expertentipp
Low tax rate in developing countries gives you non-existing public services and infrastructure in shambles. Compensating these two can after all costs you more than in countries with higher salaries, especially in emergency situations. Just look up how healthcare in Romania looks like. Croatia, except having brilliant landscapes, is no paradise to live in either when it comes to serious things.
AlexAmee
Sure in emergency situations and that's a bad thing no doubt about that but that's not the general assumption.
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thiagoperes
In Amsterdam / Netherlands:

- Booking.com

- Uber

- ING

- TravelBird

- Travix

- Backbase

- Catawiki

- Marktplaats

- KLM

- Transavia

- PVH

Or look for startups

Advantages of Netherlands, and things to look for at in a country:

- #12 highest net disposable income after tax in the world [2]

- #3 best inequality adjusted HDI in the world [1]

- #1 best healthcare in Europe, costs a flat 100 EUR for everyone [3]

- #1 highest English proficiency of non-native countries [4]

- #1 most affordable place in EU to buy a house [6]

- #4 lowest average of hours worked in OECD [5]

- Vacation days can be taken one-by-one

- Bike culture, cannabis culture, receptive towards immigrats

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequalit...

[2] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_price_rankings...

[3] https://healthpowerhouse.com/publications/euro-health-consum...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EF_English_Proficiency_Index

[5] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/01/the-countries-where-p...

[6] (page 25) https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/at/Documents/...

napolux
Marktplaats is an eBay company ;)
mihaiborcan
I had less then pleasant experiences with Booking and Uber - not to mention that Uber doesn't have the best reputation globally. I'm interested if you speak from experience.
sebazzz
Add EY to that list. It is not known but EY does a lotof software development these days, and in fact, my team has two job openings. There are a lot of career opportunities and the benefits are very good.
sabarasaba
also the 30% rule, which is a huge plus and one of the reasons I decided to move here :D
Rainymood
>- #1 most affordable place in EU to buy a house [6]

Good luck buying a place in Amsterdam ...

tome
> We all know about the big4/unicorns in the US

Which of the big 5 didn't make it in to your big 4?

jxub
Ups sorry, I've left Microsoft out it seems ;)
[dead] throwme_1980
avoid European born consultancies, especially if their HQ is not in Germany or London( make sure it is London )
teebot
Showpad is one of the fastest growing SaaS company in Europe. It's located in the really nice city of Gent in Belgium. Great culture, people and top tech. https://www.showpad.com/careers I might be slightly biased but you should consider it :)
bitL
Google Zurich (~250k CHF), Glassdoor 4.6

Facebook London (~100k GBP), Glassdoor 4.7

JetBrains Munich (~80k EUR), Glassdoor 4.8

egze
Hamburg / Germany: XING

Work language is English. Technologies used heavily: Ruby on Rails, React, iOS, Android, Perl (legacy stuff) and more. You will have a nice work/life balance and will work with smart people.

herbst
If you worry about money just take a look at Switzerland. You may dont find SV wages on every corner (especially not as starting wage) but you pay less taxes, have more holidays, awesome social structure and the life quality is just right.

There are some of the big names here (Google, Roche, IBM, ...). But there also thousands of smaller companies that come with a great work/life balance by default.

In fact legally its kind of hard to find a job with a bad work/life balance.

forg0t_username
I work at Arm in the UK. They also have offices in France, Sweden, Norway, and Hungary.

It's a great place to work:

* You're surrounded by smart people

* The work is interesting

* Short hours

* Flexible: if I want to work from home or run some errands during the day, I can drop an email "where is <insert name>" to let my team know. No need to ask anyone.

There are hardware and software roles, with everything in between: hardware design and test, infrastructure, cluster, web applications, compilers, and a lot of internal software tools.

s3nnyy
Swiss startups and SMEs are gaining importance in tech, I would say. So have a look at Switzerland and/or ping me. I am a founder of a tech recruitment agency in Zurich and we look for tech talent all over Europe who want to join Swiss companies. If you look for a tech job e-mail me at iwan@coderfit.com.)