Ask HN: Who has moved from the U.S. to Europe?
I've long considered leaving this country for a multitude of reasons.
I'd be curious to hear some first hand experiences of those who've made the move to Europe and what you think of the process and considerations one should make.
A few questions to start the conversation:
- Where do you live?
- What's the biggest sacrifice you had to make (i.e. pay, housing, friends, etc.)
- What have you gained?
473 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 82.8 ms ] thread...if you're lucky enough to be among the privileged.
Let me just take this moment to say, holy shit what a fascinating time we all live in and what a happy accident it was that I stumbled into software engineering in this particular era.
I'm not aware of a recent time in history when you could get what amounts to a doctor's salary without the lengthy schooling, rigorous training, certification.
I am doubly fortunate to be ending my career in this field. I have no idea what the future holds for those still in the field. It may well become a narrow path you need to hew to.
That applies in every country
Low income Americans have it much worse than low income Europeans on probably every single metric you can come up with.
For basic things like vacations, parental leaves, access to basic healthcare, &c.
I've seen skidrow in LA and some parts of SF and NY, this is third world country tier, it looked like war times refugees camps
It's not, I just didn't specify it because for me it's logical, I highly doubt OP wants to move to Belarus, but yeah go ahead and pick the absolute poorest and least likely countries anyone would immigrate to when they say "Europe" and tell me about moving goal posts ...
"average", "money", yeah sure, the average american probably make more money. And yes you're right, the poorest Americans make more money than the poorest Europeans, but money isn't all. Otherwise nobody would ever complain, they'd be as happy than Norway, which is obviously not the case. https://fee.org/articles/the-poorest-20-of-americans-are-ric...
If quality of life = being able to afford material goods then sure, but I guess that's were Europeans see the world in a different way. I'll take min wage, job security, healthcare, free education, more vacation days, paid sick leaves, paid parental leaves, guaranteed minimum incomes, &c. If you're a min wage worker in the EU you have a much less stressful life than in the US, it's not even comparable. They're at least half a century late in term of social/workers right
If we are comparing sub-territories then, why on earth would OP want to move to Mississippi? Or LA? Or NY? If OP moved to, say, New Hampshire or Vermont, not only would they make more money but they would have some of the highest qualify of live anywhere on the planet.
> If quality of life = being able to afford material goods then sure
New England states have similar labor / worker rights to the EU; Massachusetts has something close to universal healthcare (although not exactly, then again every country's version is different), CT has paid family and medical leave, New York has free community college, all of New England is LGBTIA+ friendly at the legislative level, etc.
> but I guess that's were Europeans see the world in a different way
I am Albanian and my family moved here when I was 6 months old. I am not defending America for nothing, I know what we left behind. You can claim that living in Germany, France, etc. is better but that is like saying buying a house in Beverly Hills is better than buying a house in Compton. Obviously rich countries are always going to be better to live in regardless of what treaties or unions they sign. The beauty of the United States is that you can get comparable quality of life results in certain areas while having military protection everywhere.
And there are absolutely places as bad if not worse than skid row in the European Union. e.g. Romani ghettos. Are we talking about the REALLY poor poor people, or just ordinary, say, 10th-percentile-level poverty? Are we comparing Skid Row in Los Angeles to Fakulteta in Sofia, Bulgaria? Or are we comparing poor trailer park minimum wage life in Alabama to poor rural minimum wage work in Romania?
And of course all this assumes "normal" full time salaried wage work for a large corporation, unless you want to add in seasonal labor or subsistence agriculture or running your own business or family-owned business work or unpaid internships or apprenticeships or contract work or gig economy work and whether any of those count as poor and whether it counts to say they do or don't have certain benefits under what conditions.
Also, just checking, but are we counting US territories (e.g. Puerto Rico)? That might change my opinion.
Some countries (like Italy) charge basically the cost of petrol in taxes.
On the cons, in the USA you generally need to drive longer distances.
If you live in a place like Austin Texas and work from home, like I do. Having a car is a delight. I can go in any direction and bring my stuff I can get stuff from the store and bring it home. I've lived without a car in New York City, there's a lot of downsides to that. You don't have the freedom to just go to IKEA and get a something.
The US doesn't really have urban area car rentals, you'd have to get to the airport first.
Ah, I see you didn’t live in Germany.
WHERE: I'm Australian, moved to LA when I was 18 and lived there for 15 years. Then, I moved from Los Angeles to Germany (Duesseldorf), and then to Vienna, Austria.
WHAT SACRIFICE: No more In 'n Out Burger, no more decent Mexican/TexMex food, no more LA food trucks. These are literally the only things I miss about the USA. Literally every other aspect of life has improved massively by leaving the USA - healthcare, food, social life. For the first 4 years I walked to work, ffs. Now I ride a bicycle in combination with the best public transportation options in the world (Austria, Vienna).
GAINED: I've completely lost the brain-dead nationalist mentality that had infected me in my earlier life, I've gained Immense amounts of respect for humanity, I've learned German, I've experienced professional software and hardware development away from Silicon Valley standard practices, and I get to see the USA from outside the decadent, rose-colored bubble from which it is usually experienced. I honestly wish I'd left sooner - every time I go back I'm reminded just how much of a shithole the USA really is ..
Plus, living and loving in Europe is just great. There is no greater joy than a trip through the Balkans for a week adventure, or maybe a jaunt to Spain or southern France. Just being able to travel an hour in any direction and being immersed in absolutely foreign culture is a joy like no other. Definitely a great way to ground oneself.
EDIT: The weather was pretty good in LA. But, still: Americans.
Quality of life is pretty high in Australia, though, I have to admit. Nothing quite like hitting the beach after work - which I did a few times in LA, only to get a horrendous infection. But, still, I am lucky enough to choose my path and I am for sure never going back to Australia to live. Or, LA/USA.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
People replying to you (Americans?) seem to take great offense to your (harsh) criticism of America but it's largely on the mark. The US has many good things going for it but they mostly have to do with having a lot of money/power, trying to get a lot of money/power or being ideologically way off to the right.
I don't know what you dislike about Australian culture but for me it's the parochial nature of the place along with the smugness combined with the cultural cringe. It does indeed have a great quality of life as long as you enjoy beer, sports and the beach. You'll find the most interesting Australians are elsewhere in the world. To give it due credit it is a country with massive immigration (30% of residents were born overseas) where people by and large get on very well with each other.
When I self taught, I primarily used Assimil and Pimsleur daily for the first six months. After completing those programs, I continued with the daily study (that’s the most important part!) and used Easy German the YouTube channel, watched a bunch of German shows, and worked on speaking just by narrating / describing random things and looking up words as needed.
Honestly, it took me 5 years to feel comfortable speaking fluent German - mostly because Germans just refuse to correct German-speaking expats, instead choosing to switch to their English ..
Oh boy, this gave me a good chuckle. Thanks for that.
I had hitherto been unaware of this proclivity, thanks for educating us all.
Germany is still doing cleanup of WW2 damages today, everyone has experienced at least one evacuation due to old leftover bombs being found. It’s hard to support war when its damages are still deep in the collective consciousness
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitali_Klitschko#Political_car...
>UDAR is supported by the German government and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation[93][94] and received support in particular from Angela Merkel and also politicians from the conservative European People's Party. According to information gained by the German magazine Der Spiegel, the target was to "set up Klitschko purposefully as a new strong man in Kyiv—in order to counter this way the Kremlin's growing influence".
>Klitschko was one of the dominant figures of the Euromaidan protests.
Germany hasn't exactly kept their hands clean over the last few years. But I'm glad you enjoy the propaganda.
https://www.state.gov/foreign-language-training/
In my case, I am a native Czech who speaks flawless Czech, but some people actually refuse to acknowledge me as a Czech on account of my Bulgarian surname. (Funnily some of them cannot even write properly, but hey, they are Nováks or Kučeras and I am not.) Not a majority, but this kind of tribalism is more widespread here than in countries that were founded on mass immigration.
Replace Americans with any other nationality and see how offensive this sounds.
(And, btw, $2,000,000 is hardly "high-roller" status, spread out in taxes over 15 years... unless of course you're one of those "living under a bridge because medical bankrupcy" Americans, lol..)
Edit: you posted a lot of other flamewar comments to this thread too. That's not ok, regardless of how bad other comments are or you feel they are. If you'd please review the site guidelines and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
This is purely inflammatory rhetoric. Ironically coming from someone who immigrated, was afforded the opportunity to make enough to pay $2M in taxes in 15 years (and even goes on to brag about this payment funding blowing up brown kids), and found the "American Dream" by his own statement.
You're free to hate America. We're free to be happy you left. But really you're gone, just go on enjoying your life. America isn't perfect and has a lot of problems but I'm much happier here than I would be in Europe, it's definitely not a "shithole" to me, my family, or most of the people I know.
I did not say America is wonderful. I don't know why you even quoted that word, when it did not appear in my post. I claimed American taxpayers protect Australia's sovereignty. Obviously your state can do better things with its budget when its defense is bankrolled by someone else. I do not care where you live, your quality of life would plummet if the prospect of being invaded by Russia or China was a real one, a prospect you are protected from through American military supremacy. See Ukraine.
Didn't seem to help the Ukraine at all last time around. :/
If you post like this to HN again, we are going to have to ban you. Please read and follow the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. The quality of discussion we want here is at the opposite end of the pool.
Everything is so spread out and car centric. Our towns and cities are concrete jungles with massive amounts of parking lots that are rarely used. It’s very hard to live where you can walk to a grocery store. We are a nation of building dwellers using giant vehicles to take us from one building to another one. And the food; massive amounts of added sugar and fruit that is tasteless. Addicted to crappy fast food, lonely, and under exercised. Major changes are desperately needed.
Very hard seems like an exaggeration. More expensive, maybe, but millions of low-income people also do it.
I didn't have a car for most of my twenties, and the majority of my social group didn't either. Living in a more spread out area of the US is a choice-- one that comes with benefits, but still a choice.
I think you can agree that in most places, if you are walking to get groceries, you are either living in a well to do area, or you are forced to because you can’t afford a car, and it isn’t a pleasant experience.
If you count entire cities as "well to do areas" then I suppose I agree.
And no it isn’t the same thing, but that was what parent comment was communicating. If people assume you are poor because you aren’t driving then you live in a place where you can’t walk to get groceries, in a practical sense, because clearly for any normal person the trade offs are prohibitive.
I made my reply assuming the parent comment meant literally what they said. If you are reading another meaning into it, that's fine and I don't disagree. But they also don't contradict my comment, so why frame it like an argument?
I find it odd that you’re asking why I’m framing it as an argument as though an argument wasn’t already framed.
I don't at all disagree that most of the US is not walkable. Both these things can be true at the same time, but I felt the literal statement of the parent comment was incorrect, so I corrected it.
And I really should apologize, I think some of my own frustration was taken out on you there. I personally would really rather not own a car, but outside of the northeast, it’s very impractical to do so.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2015/august/most-us-hou...
The city boasts a strong spiritual history, which I sense, causes people to come here to either flourish, or get spit out. There's not much in the way of hiking/mountains around here, and the most beautiful natural environments are in the swamp amongst the gators and pelicans dancing through the soft and grassy patches of muddy land dotting the waters edge. There are no other cities I really like visiting within an hour. It's a bright blue dot in a fire-red state. Car-jackings are up 550% over last year, and the particular circumstances by which someone killed someone with a machete at the gas-station down the street from my house, I'm sorry to say, were unsurprising.
Having said that, I can't live the rest of my life not having *lived* outside of the US. I'll be moving to Berlin at some point, because that's the closest city that felt like it feels here. The food is cheaper, you can find Indian food, and there are more languages spoken. The government there doesn't feel like some morally corrupted festering cesspool of civil indifference and political myopia. Despite everything I love about this place, and that I'm quite certain I'll retire here, I'm eager to GTFO while I still feel young, to experience what its like to feel young in a place more free than the farce I've been raised to believe. I have friends in Berlin, and though German is pretty hard to speak well, I'm up for the challenge.
LA has a reputation even within the US of being what you describe as a "shithole."
I lived in Germany for years, the former east, and it would be unfair to call Germany a "shithole" based on my own experience in the former Soviet bloc, which has struggled both pre and post reunification due to Communist rule.
Come on, dude. Germany was "communist" for less than 40 years. You have been "free" and cool for 33 and counting. The wall existed for only 28. Are you going to keep blaming "communists" for the next 400 years? :D
In fact, there is special income tax, Solidaritätszuschlag, that is paid on all income as special assistance in rebuilding and equalizing the former East.
And you know nothing about me.
I know you think the east side of Germany is not a good place today because what happened there more than 30 years ago.
But you know what? GDR commies said in the late 80s their regime was not a good place either because what happened there 40 years earlier! Sound familiar?
You can take the train, no need to drive even better!
These are exactly the kinds of faux profundities I used to hear — and say! — traveling in youth hostels in my late teens.
It’s jarring to see them coming from someone ostensibly past forty.
Did you go visit Srebrenica when you were there?
Anyone who hasn't has to be blind or something. Germany has a highly stratified society besides the N/S/E/W split.
LA is a car-centric sprawling cesspool. Even for the US, it’s uniquely terrible.
If you’d moved to some of the less desirable locations in Europe, you’d probably find them to be a shithole, too.
Your lack of perspective (“how much of a shithole the USA really is”) is something I’d only expect from someone half your age on their first backpacking tour of Europe.
The USA is a huge shithole, and if you don't understand why anyone would think that, I have a bridge to sell you .. under which live 12 families, kids and all, who couldn't pay their medical bills after Mom/Grandpa died of cancer.
It is a very American thing to get so upset when the country is criticized. Haven't run into that in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, or Serbia. Okay, the Hungarians can match American nationalism at times, but for the most part you guys have a monopoly on incomprehensibly bone-headed nationalism occluding your view of the wonders of the rest of the world...
Yes of course, making it a shithole for those who didn't.
I'm convinced that other states and countries try to smear Florida because they're terrified what would happen if they themselves had the bravery to commit to Florida's level of governmental transparency.
https://uwf.edu/go/legal-and-consumer-info/florida-sunshine-...
Most of the time it’s just punching downwards.
You know it's working because people get caught trying to circumvent it[0]. The Attorney General hates it[1]. Without it, we wouldn't know about former governor candidate Andrew Gillum being a methhead[2]. I can't confirm this but I'm fairly sure we only know about the expired COVID tests because of this law[3].
I simply encourage you to educate yourself on Florida and to understand that their openness is something to be lauded, not feared or mocked.
[0]https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2022/01/07/2-...
[1]https://flaglerlive.com/95717/sunshine-law-snyder/
[2]https://www.cbsnews.com/news/andrew-gillum-found-at-scene-of...
[3]https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/desantis-conf...
Knowing that a former gubernatorial candidate is/was a meth head isn’t a crowning achievement.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/florida-affordable-h...
I get it that Floridians don't want a nanny state, but this kind of thing is why the below-median lifestyle in the state looks like a shithole from a European POV.
The fact that the 1% is so well-off makes the picture look even worse.
edit: Now that I think about it your mentality fits very well with someone from Vienna, you've integrated well.
Another reason could be the mindless, abject hatred you seem to have of the country. If you approached your criticisms rationally they likely would be better recieved. Instead it sounds like you're spouting what you've read on woke twitter and have left no room for compromise. Saying "The USA is a shithole" is akin to saying "Europe is a shithole". It's a blanket statement that it not unilaterally true for either. I lived in Europe myself for several years and there were things I both loved and hated. There were nice areas as well as shitty areas. After spending those years in the EU, I've come to prefer the US. You're entitled to your opinion, you're not entitled to generalize an entire country and it's population and then insult someone when they object to those generalizations.
This would be a fair argument if you, as an American, weren't ignoring the fact that the USA is the worlds #1 cause of terror, war and torment - in countless other sovereign nations, whose infrastructure was torn apart so that Americans could feel good about themselves and their country.
Austrians, and Germans aren't dropping bombs on innocent people every twenty minutes. Your perception that America is unjustly criticized belies the fact that just maybe, you need to travel a bit more to see that a lot of the world is seriously fed up with America's bullshit. The point of travelling is to try to understand that a bit better, and I hope you do that. In the same way that I generalize about America being a shit-hole - Americans generalize, and then drop bombs.
Pax Americana has been the most productive time in modern history. Europe's track record is objectively worse
When you say "a lot of the world" you really talking about a very specific subset of the world, while there is also much of the world grateful for our presence as we are the only real deterrent from NK, Russia, or China taking their country by force. Feel free to deny or say that I'm "othering" or am perpetuating a boogey-man, but there is very real data and intelligence to support these claims, I'm not just pulling it out of my ass.
One of the few things I liked about Trump was his statements that our allies need to spend more on defense. We should not shoulder the burden alone.
https://thediplomat.com/2015/06/evolution-of-the-u-s-rok-all...
For a nation to be as wealthy as we are and to be in the state we are in I think it’s fair to say the U.S. is a shit hole country. Our patriotism and propaganda blind us to this fact.
Before you criticize everyone and everything else, take a look at your own behavior and see if there's anything you can do to mitigate harm at your scale.
I haven’t criticized everyone or everything else. I criticized the U.S. for being as wealthy as it is and being in the state it is in. It’s not a good look for you to complain about overgeneralizing and then write the above overgeneralization.
My presidential voting record:
George Bush 1992
Bob Dole 1996
Green Party 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012
Donald Trump 2016
My air is clean, my commutes are traffic free, the people here generally suck, and I have access to world class... everything, if I want it (well, maybe not transportation, but my car is nice, German even!, and I can get everywhere in it pretty easily). Because I'm wealthy, I can afford all of the things you get for free in Germany without it negatively affecting my way of life, which probably helps substantially, but that's part of America too.
I want to move to Europe from the US, everything you described is amazing, but maybe it's a shithole to you because you've only been to a few places in the US.
Hawaii is in the US. Puerto Rico, Alaska, The Everglades, Sequoia National Park, Glacier National Park, Yellowstone National Park; it's hard to go to those places and walk away thinking they're "shitholes".
The USA is huge. Some of it is a shithole, and where you lived for 15 years is probably closer to shithole than not, but "The USA is a huge shithole" is probably not as true as you're making it out to be here.
But the nationalist culture, the pride and arrogance, the ignorance of the cost to the rest of the world of American moral authority - this is prevalent no matter where you go in the USA.
And then, there's the social fabric. Go outside and find your nearest bum, living on the street. Get to know them and how they go there. That is a very American circumstance.
My worry for you is that this reaction is a visceral one, fundamentally rooted in a dislike for America's diversity.
It's a messy process, getting everyone to work together, and we're fucking it up pretty monumentally, but to call the effort a "shithole" seems like you'd prefer the US be less diverse? Fewer disagreements would arise, but at what cost?
Germany and Austria have... less than stellar records when it comes to human rights, and aren't exactly known for their exploding levels of diversity on a national level, so perhaps the "unity" you're experiencing came at a cost? Perhaps that very cost was something that disgusted you in the US?
I wonder how a Muslim would describe living in Vienna vs. living in, say, Chicago or DC.
Fully absent from your consideration is the fact that both Austria and Germany are part of the EU, a project in diversity maybe only outdone by the indian federal state.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_by_country
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_G...
I was wondering if this might be because most immigration in Germany is actually from more or less neighboring EU countries, and according to [1], that group accounts for 2/3 of the immigrants.
[1] Figure 2: https://www.bamf.de/DE/Themen/Forschung/Veroeffentlichungen/...
And EU diversity isn't anything like American diversity. Your countries are nothing like our states, our "mixing" is a lot higher.
The US has to solve problems of a kind and at a level Germany and Austria will never have to deal with. The scales just don't compare, it's laughable to even try.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_et...
As an outsider, this looks like the biggest problem in the US. The EU is no utopia, but standards of living, environment and way of life is pretty good for the "not-wealthy". In the US, it looks like you can also have a pretty damn good standard of living with a nice environment... but only if you are in the fairly wealthy minority. Which perhaps explains why there is such a focus on unobtainable "prosperity", to make it to the "other side".
Even if I can afford it, that concept of society doesn't appeal to me at all, it feels pseudo-elitist based on something that is mostly dictated by random opportunity - sorry if that sounds horrible.
You have to understand though, when I travel to the EU, my personal quality of life drops, because of that fact. I understand why, and I don't think any less of the EU because of it (I want to live there someday), but if you're lucky enough to be marginally wealthy in the US, it's a whole different experience, and a lot of HN users will fall into that "fairly wealthy minority".
You're not talking to the median income folks in the US if you come to HN, I would guess. But we don't have to lift a finger to get to experience all the best parts of the US, without many/any of the downsides.
True, I think there probably is another geographical difference here.
Whenever salaries are discussed on HN there appears to be one or two zeros difference compared to the median salary over here for similar jobs - only as a casual observation, I can't be sure (i.e we get paid significantly less). If it's true, I suspect this is because of the differences in income threshold for a decent standard of living, and because of certain aspects that are mostly decoupled from salary such as social health care.
Another resulting difference then, might be that on average workers of tech jobs in the EU are more likely to rub elbows with and be more relatable to people of "less prestigious" jobs - which I think is probably a good thing - I feel like I'm about to be accused of being a socialist though :P
You're mostly right. Except the threshold for a nicer life isn't the wealthy minority. i'd hazard a guess that it's somewhere below median income i.e. i could get so much more in most of the US for the median income vs what i could get in most parts of Europe for the median income. however the bottom quarter have so many more problems here. Coincidentally this is about the amount of people struggling to afford medical care.
Personally (having lived many places) i would want to be in a much higher income quotient in Europe.
Romania and Bulgaria are part of the EU. Some 25-30 million people in total. Do you think the standards of living are "pretty good" for the non-wealthy Bulgarians?
Even with this caveat, there is a difference in principle that I believe distinguishes the way of life for the less wealthy in the US compared to most of the EU. A big part of US culture seems to be something along the lines of "everyone for themselves", and "paying your own way", which neglects those not blessed with opportunity and seems to encourages larger wealth disparity. I do not believe most of the governments of the EU share this principle, but I welcome counter examples. That said, it's also not black and white: even the US borrows socialist tools to equalise such disparities where it's been proven to work best, such as public schools and libraries.
Because I too can reduce this comparison to a couple of well picked numbers like say per capita GDP or number of companies in top 100 by market cap and conclude that it is EU who should borrow capitalist programs from the US, not the other way around.
But I won’t…
Perhaps write from a place with less "preconceived conclusions" about the other commenters motives next time.
I don't think you have seen how poor people live on either side of the Atlantic and yet you believe being poor in EU is inherently better than in the USA. What is your source of information?
I grew up in Fayetteville AR watching my family struggle at multiple times... especially over health care emergencies. Ultimately this led me to leave the country. I'd recommend you take a look around your city / state and look at the damage we are doing to people who have less than us.
They deserve to rot in poverty for their regressive, racist views, and the hate the spews from that town and out into the rest of America.
They do so much more damage than I ever could by making a good living.
All Americans are stuck in a perpetual guerilla war that is American society, and until that changes nothing will change.
I think that most progress in society is made through the death of the previous generation and new ideas being more accepted. It is slow but crunches on over the bones of the old. And, this is why it is so important culture/society/government get in there to break the poverty cycle, break the ignorance, teach critical thinking, etc etc etc...
You were a tourist here. You lived in Los Angeles. Yet you somehow feel emboldened to call a nation of 330M+ people "A huge shithole"? And you haven't met any nationalistic Serbians? Sorry if I don't take you seriously.
OP seems to deal in intense absolutes
I think this is thankfully becoming at least slightly less common, at least among educated Americans. For me at least the combination of meeting more people outside my bubble, travelling and learning more about the history of the United States has led me to a similar conclusion that you have reached.
A few weeks ago I returned to my rural Minnesota hometown to see people that had come from families that had lived there multiple generations wearing confederate flag clothing. I wonder if they had any concept of which side their forefathers would have been fighting with back then.
Florida had the highest net migration in the US both domestically and internationally. Here's the census data for 2021:
The largest net domestic migration gains were in Florida (220,890), Texas (170,307) and Arizona (93,026).
Florida (38,590), Texas (27,185) and New York (18,307) had the largest population gains from net international migration.
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/2021-pop...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I'm a Canadian and I've travelled most of Europe, and most of the US (among other parts of the world).
The simple fact that the US doesn't have universal healthcare, and refuses to do anything real about it, or other endemic self-inflicted issues like gun violence - problems the rest of the modern world solved long ago! - kinda puts you at the bottom of the list of modern/developed countries in my book.
OP used a rather inflammatory term for sure, but he's not wrong when comparing pros/cons of first-world countries to the US. Y'all have real problems that you could solve but _choose_ not to.
It's obviously not all bad, there are lots of things to love about the US, but I would never ever choose to live there for the reasons above and more.
> I'm a Canadian
Presented without comment.
What is funny, is how many Canadians come to the US for faster or better treatment. No more 3 month wait list to get a basic procedure. It's almost like there are pros and cons to every system, eh?
I have a roommate who hasn't had health care most of his adult life because the cost is so high and the fact that most low-end jobs don't offer any. But fuck him I guess.
Well that's certainly not the majority of people, and I did say _universal_ health care, not "health care for those who can afford it".
Look, I get it... In the US, your worth as a person - and your access to essential services - is tied to your wealth.
And while that's a horrible and cruel way to be, it's all you know, so you don't see that it is, particularly if you've never been on the wanting end of that deal.
As a median middle-class person, Canada is pretty clearly the winner. Significantly less economic precarity, lots of mostly (cough Canada Post) well-run public services, and a somewhat self-fulfilling prophecy that government can make people's lives better.
As a median HN reader, it's a little bit more of a mixed bag:
The pay for software development work in the US is probably about double in terms of PPP versus Canada.
The fact that the US is a much bigger market means that a lot of apps/consumer goods/services are available in the US months or years before they launch in Canada. For online orders, delivery is faster, prices are cheaper, and the selection is better in the US.
Lastly, and this is kind of specific to the Greater Vancouver/Victoria area, but you pretty much have to be part of the 1% to afford a nice house in any moderately interesting city. I think a lot of this has to do with having the mildest weather in Canada and the geographic constraints of the mountains and waterways (along with being fucked up in pretty much all the same ways as the US real-estate market). That said, in Canada the 1% isn't comically out of reach for a moderately prosperous software nerd.
My biggest gripe with the US is the overall sense of incuriosity. Say what you will about American Exceptionalism, if you answer every question of "why don't we <do thing> like <country that does it way better than us>?" with "because we're different", rather than asking if we could try to emulate the way that <country> does <thing>, it leads to a lot of unnecessary stagnation. If the US can at some point get over itself, it probably has a lot of opportunity for catch-up growth.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I don't feel like my reply was nationalistic (I'm Canadian, we're the least patriotic people around!), inflammatory or nasty in any way, but I will skip these kinds of convos in the future.
Swipes like the following are nationalistic putdowns, no different from the kind of thing we ask other users not to post here:
> kinda puts you at the bottom of the list of modern/developed countries
> Y'all have real problems that you could solve but _choose_ not to
> It's obviously not all bad
I can absolutely confirm the sentiment of the OP, not coming from worst to best but coming from mid range to mid range. Europe has the better package. The amount of homeless, the amount of wasted landscape, the amount of beton, the car dependency, the disgusting public transport, the hotels, the water, ... I can rant for an hour. I love Americans, i deeply respect a lot what they did and do but life quality measured in every day quality ... Do not get me started on that.
Sie werden nicht für Demut gezüchtet, während die meisten Europäer heutzutage...
Ach. Ich editiere das mal: Beide sind so dumm, dass die Schweine sie beissen! Grunz
It's so difficult to get Americans to grasp that this could be true. Most simply won't contemplate that it could be true. It does not occur to us that freedom to get healthcare without fear of going bankrupt is a freedom worth having. The simple act of walking from one town to another is alien to Americans. One thing that struck me when living in Germany was the lack of development around the lakes. In the U.S. lakes mostly are surrounded by houses with little thought to letting people walk there and enjoy the lake. I much prefer the European way of life. Europeans know how to live better than Americans. But we Americans can burn Korans, walk around with guns, and do Nazi salutes so we must be more free than Europeans....
LA isn’t even the worst in that regard (I’d take LA over DFW)
I don’t know where you are from, but LA is actually representative of large swaths of the US, and highlights some of the best things about America (namely multiculturalism and diversity)
I share a lot of your perspectives too, but I’m pretty content with my little corner up in the PNW.
No, not even close.
Not identical, but representative yes.
I actually grew up in LA, and now live in the foothills outside of Boulder on a large forest property — which is nothing like LA or Vienna.
I haven’t run into many areas of the US reminiscent of LA, and the US is enormous. It can’t be painted with a single (and such a reductive) brush.
>"The weather was pretty good in LA. But, still: Americans."
The latter statement clearly negates the former. It's fascinating that the irony of those two conflicting statements was completely lost on you.
Further your use of a monolithic "Americans" is almost comical. Honestly it sounds as though maybe you didn't get out of LA very much in your 15 years. And as others have also pointed out LA is not at all representative of the rest of the country.
Looks like you gained a different one though.
This. As someone who moved to the USA ten years ago, you do not understand "the bubble" Americans live in until you see it from inside and out. People here live on a stage with absolutely no idea that a global audience is watching them. People also can think and say things in absolute confidence which are considered ludicrous by 99% of the rest of the world.
I for a long time could not wrap my head around why so many people actively reject the idea of free health care, but it made me realize how little I appreciated when I had it.
... and it's scary how things just seem to be getting worse here with no real hope for improvement without massive reform. Reform that can only happen if something catastrophically bad happens in the near future.
edit: and I don't mean this in a critical way, I mean it objectively as possible.
I mean, that's great that you can walk to places and eat tasty food but I feel like you left out a large part of what it's like to live somewhere.
In which European countries could you not do that? I’m in Scandinavia and can’t imagine what kind of problem regarding religious practice you would encounter here that you wouldn’t in the US or UK.
I’m white myself, but I actually heard the opposite from non white Americans while I was living in Spain(ie they preferred it there)
Similar to the US m, Europe is a fairly large and diverse place, so it’s not like I can paint it with a broad brush.
This has to be satire. In fact, this whole comment has to be satire.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/9/a-law-against-islam https://www.wsj.com/articles/france-passes-new-bill-to-tight...
Those who prefer to act in a non-secular way should find better places for it.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting from now on, we'd appreciate it.
- Where do you live? SF -> Amsterdam
- What's the biggest sacrifice you had to make (i.e. pay, housing, friends, etc.) I was shocked when my HR department told me our salaries would pretty much be cut in half. I was also furious because I was going to be working remotely for the same team, doing the same work and would bring the same value. We still did it, and honestly, I felt richer over there. Housing is much cheaper both renting and buying. Groceries felt like no matter what we'd buy, it'd be 20E. Even after 3 years we'd be surprised at how cheap it is. Activities, restaurants, etc are all much cheaper too.
We left a bunch of friend behind obviously but made friends there. Like most expats, mostly other expats through work and not a lot of locals.
Weather sucks.
No amazon and it sucks not to have it when you are used to buying everything and getting it the next day. Also, probably because of the amount of countries there are, buying things online seems to be shipped more often from other countries and the delivery times are usually longer.
- What have you gained? As mentioned, despite /2 our salary, we felt much richer, much more comfortable. When we quit our jobs we felt comfortable not making a lot of money because even our mortgage there was cheap. Working for a US tech company still put us way above the average income. Also, like in most of EU, great healthcare and other benefits.
Amsterdam in particular is great for biking/walking, it's truly a very nice city except for the terrible weather. We still talk about how we miss our lives there, but would never move back because of the weather, especially compared to the bay area.
I think the TLDR of our experience was that EU was just more chill, more comfortable, a bit broader in terms of culture, less grind less work. I was so happy about where i'm at in Amsterdam, and as soon as we got back to the US, something, I'm not sure what, made me get back on that hedonic treadmill and grind again for more more more and more.
I'd recommend it :)
You won't be buying million-dollar mansions on a European programmers salary, but then maybe you'll find less materialist goals in the European context .. just being able to take a train-ride anywhere is a vast improvement.
Its just the employment laws that make half your paycheck disappear every month. But, don't worry, when you need healthcare you won't be going anywhere near a bankruptcy procedure. I broke my arm a few years back and needed reconstructive surgery that would have cost me multiple $100,000+'s in the USA - whereas here in Austria, even unemployed, I was covered and did not have to pay a dime.
https://www.ams.at/arbeitsuchende/arbeitslos-was-tun/geld-vo...
You won't be buying any decent apartment/house unless you move outside of city, buy a car and let go of all the benefits that comes with living in a European city.
We have a housing crisis also here in Europe.
I've been hacking on something I have no business really doing (skill level: can barely read header files). If you're open to new things, please, please reach out. My fiancé and her sister absolutely love a little audio product I made, and even if I sell two more or a million more, break even or go broke, giving in this way makes life worth living. Cheers mate
Bol.com is the Dutch Amazon with quick delivery. And Amazon.nl launched in March 2020 but is worse for most needs here.
In NL there are are multiple similar companies (Coolblue, Bol.com) which offer next day delivery on everything and even same day delivery in the major cities (i.e. including Amsterdam) on some things.
Amazon.nl has also been here for a couple of years (again with same day delivery), and you have been able to order from Amazon.de (again, with same day delivery) for many years.
Of course there's Amazon in NL. But more importantly, there's also bol.com and Cool Blue, which are better. Or at least less shitty.
Must be truly spoiled coming from SF. As for amazon: amazon.nl (not .com) and you are set.
A friend of mine moved from Seattle to Munich for work as an SSE, and his experience with respect to the pay cut matches yours. He was expecting that, but did not factor in the increase in taxes on top of that. He said he was broke and living off savings for the first time in his adult life, while working 40 hours a week for a major software company.
(I'm a senior software engineer in Europe, doing alright)
Did he have massive student debt or something?
Housing and taxes are both expensive.
Mainly the US has many benefits:
- Much, much higher salaries - like 2-3x higher than Western Europe _before_ income tax!
- Much larger houses for the price. i.e. you can have a big house with room for hobbies or children rather than just a small flat.
- Lower prices on a lot of fixed-price goods - cars, electronics, fuel, electricity, natural gas, etc.
- Lower income and sales tax so you can save for a property and retirement. This is really tough in Europe, the sort of Tech FIRE culture doesn't exist due to that - wealth is primarily inherited.
The downsides are:
- It's a necessity to drive, but at least outside the big cities it's a lot easier than Europe overall (big, wide, straight roads and automatic cars).
- Healthcare is tied to your employer so it can be incredibly risky when moving as an immigrant since until you get a Green Card, you are tied to the one employer (good luck negotiating a raise!). Note that in most Tech companies, the health insurance gives you better coverage than public systems in Europe (e.g. covering dentistry and annual checkups).
- Less stability in employment - at-will employment, lower unemployment payments (except vs. the UK), no trade unions in Tech.
- Safety in some areas wrt. gun crime, etc. - you have to choose where you live and work very carefully.
- Backwards in some technology (online payments, card payments, digitisation of government services vs. the UK and Scandinavia for example).
A main decision point would be if you have kids. Europe is great to move to if you've already saved a lot in the US, can move to Europe and buy a house outright, get permanent residency and then have children and benefit from better paternal leave and even universal child benefit payments (Kindergeld/Barnbidrag, etc.)
Whereas if you are child-free, and don't already have enough savings to buy property, it's going to be harder to achieve that in Europe IMO.
Where does this number come from? Assuming SWE, a senior SWE in Europe will generally take around 80/120k € (non-FAANG). 2-3x means a range of 180/400k $, which is not common even in the USA.
Nowhere near - I got 75k EUR at a FAANG (whilst the same position in the US paid ~$165k USD - the levels were public). I now get 86k EUR in one of the most expensive countries in Europe (with over 40% tax rate too).
But most Tech salaries are much lower, I started on the equivalent of $40k USD for example, and it's common for people to level out around $65-70k USD.
> Much, much higher salaries - like 2-3x higher than Western Europe _before_ income tax!
> Much larger houses for the price. i.e. you can have a big house with room for hobbies or children rather than just a small flat.
But remember that in those parts of the US where people have those very high salaries, people seem to complain about not being able to afford to buy a house at all. Should be less of a problem nowadays with remote work though.
Housing is always smaller than you'd get in (at least the western) US for the same price, and I'd bet that's true pretty much everywhere in Europe. Speaking the same language is useful, but Covid has made it hard to make friends or do much.
Despite its reputation, I find that Europe is far more provincial than the US when it comes to food - a lot of stuff you think of as ubiquitous in the West will be "foreign" food and harder 48 to find. (And if you like tacos, stay on that side of the pond.)
Benefits: it's a lot quieter and generally less dangerous than the US. The NHS is absolutely amazing and you'll never want to deal with the American system ever again. People tend to be less aggressive.
From an entrepreneurial standpoint I'm sure it's much harder to get up and running, but I'm old enough to not care anymore. If I could work legally for a UK startup or tech firm doing basic dev I'd be happy enough and well-paid enough to never feel the urge to start my own ragged little thing again.
It is colder in most of Europe than the US, in my experience (not just living here but traveling extensively in my life). If you're a Cali kid, you will miss the sunlight, especially in the winter. It's like a fucking Joy Division video here from October through April. :-D
I think if my wife and I could afford to split our time between here and Vegas, we would. But that's just not in the cards right now.
But hey, at least they're not on the brink of civil war here and the curry is good.
I think that might be overstated.
> NHS is absolutely amazing
I've read and heard that for a non-emergency appointments, the wait could sometimes be months. Is that also overstated?
Also the quality of the NHS is pretty bad. The NHS being great is the usual state-backed propaganda you can hear in a lot of other European countries to justify spending all that tax money on healthcare.
Just from my personal experience: They skipped some safety measures they were supposed to follow during a birth delivery, they dealt terribly with one of my newborns after birth, they recommended removing 4 teeth of a 2 year old (we went private and all his teeth are fine and have been properly cleaned), they said that what we thought was a cavity was just a "discolouration" (it was a cavity, we dealt with it privately).
Luckily most decent employers pay private insurance (BUPA is very popular).
Not really. The NHS itself and the various NHS trusts have been continuously drained of funding over the past few decades. The NHS runs on a shoestring.
If you want things to improve, Tory cuts need to be rolled back.
It is increasing right now, the current plan (2018-2024) increases the budget by 3.4% in real terms every year.
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-...
Depends on where you are. I lived in the UK until last August and am now in the US. When I lived in London and Oxford I found the wait times to be very quick - in Oxford I could get non-emergency appointments the same day, possibly due to the high number of GPs and University hospitals. In London it was same week for everything I ever had an issue with. I believe in the less well-off areas, especially in the North of the country, there are areas with far lower staff numbers so the waiting time inflates. Worst-case scenarios in worst-case areas do have multiple-month waiting times nowadays.
Said that it is much worse than Germany or France. To this day I don’t understand the British obsession for a healthcare system that would be acceptable in a middle income country (say Russia or Mexico), but that’s clearly not what you’d expect in a developed country.
I moved from the UK to Germany right when I had to have surgery and the wait time was identical (scans were much quicker though as I lived right next to a student hospital).
Seeing specialists through the NHS is very hard. I’m giving you some examples from my past year:
- in the UK women deliver babies without being visited by a gynaecologist a single time, my partner had to pay for that.
- The NHS don’t provide paediatricians. We have to go to a private doctor.
- Getting a referral for an allergologist was taking ages, we had to take the baby to a private doctor.
All this cost in excess of 5000£. My insurance paid or will pay back that money, so it’s not a problem for me, but not everybody is insured here.
I would have spent 0€ in Germany or France for the same level of service.
You think correctly, this is sensationalist nonsense. Maybe a group of 0.05% of the population are in a bubble thinking their riots about stuff will constitute a civil war but by no means is there any sizable group wanting to protest aggressively.
So people used to the Pacific Northwest would fit right in.
Moving from LA to Minneapolis will be depressing, moving from Rome to London will too.
No context. Minneapolis is "hot like hell" in summer and "cold like hell" in winter.
London is mild and rainy but it's not too bad.
That might be an external reputation, but it wouldn't be one that Europeans would have. People forget that Europe isn't a country, but a collection of different countries, all with long histories, and long histories means a lot of regional differences even _within_ countries.
> It is colder in most of Europe than the US,
I think people forget how far north Europe is: Paris is further north than Seattle. For how far north everything is, Europe is positively _balmy_!
> It's like a fucking Joy Division video here from October through April.
And that's why, especially in Northern Europe, a lot of the culture is around, for want of a better term, coziness: it's only a little to do with the cold, and everything to do with the dark.
Thanks to the Gulf Stream. One potential risk of climate change is that if the circulation patterns are disrupted, our nice supply of warm water from the Atlantic might cease and it would actually get locally colder.
> That might be an external reputation, but it wouldn't be one that Europeans would have. People forget that Europe isn't a country, but a collection of different countries, all with long histories, and long histories means a lot of regional differences even _within_ countries.
yes and no. You can absolutely notice that here in the south of Germany you simply don't get a few things that are from the north, or from the very close-by Austria, and I mean that in a way that you wouldn't believe North California is different than South California. Like.. whole restaurant chains that are virtually unknown on either side of the imaginary barrier, or stuff you can get in a supermarket or bakery. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's what I can imagine the parent meant - it may just be 500km in the same country and it's completely different.
I realized that this answer might be pretty biased after reading this inaccurate statement
> ... I'd bet that's true pretty much everywhere in Europe.
I think those two statements are very far apart.
I find it extremely hard to believe you can't find good tacos in London.
Last time I visited London and Paris I was overwhelmed by the variety of cuisines available. Probably the ubiquity of tacos in the US is replaced by food from every random tiny country you can think of.
Of course this isn't always applicable outside these 2 megacities; you're more likely to find more Turkish restaurants everywhere than Mexican ones everywhere in Europe.
That’s because you are just outside London, and the UK bar London Zone 1 and 2 is the third world of gastronomy.
And honestly it is fairly common to find peanut butter in supermarket in most of Western Europe (at least), may not be good but it exists.
lets see how much the Scottish want to get back into the EU
> And if you like tacos, stay on that side of the pond.
Why are there no tacos in EU? I have noticed this in multiple places in Europe. The best I can figure, there is not a good supply of cheap chicken.
I honestly think there is an opportunity there. If someone can get a taco franchise in EU going I will pitch in for one location.
https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes
Good example how different life is for example for kids in The Netherlands compared to USA/Canada. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul_xzyCDT98
This colleague mentioned that it was the same for her, who was German but from a different part of Germany (like, we were in the East part of Germany and she was from the Northern part). She mentioned that Germans for the most part make their friends groups in the first ~18 years of their lives, and afterwards it is difficult to make friends.
Also reminds me of a time I was in the UK, walking with a German girl, near a train station. We saw a person who looked pretty lost (I think he had luggage and was looking at a wall map... al in all he looked confused). I approached this guy and asked him whether he needed help. He replied with a German accent, and he was indeed lost and was looking for some place. I proceeded to give him instructions on how to get to where he was going.
During all this time, my German friend was a bit further away from us. After I finished helping the guy she found it amusing how I approached the person and talked to him "out of nowhere". She told me that in Germany you don't normally approach people that you don't know like that. I asked her, "then how do you make new friends?" to what she responded that maybe only by introduction form a third party.
Anglo Saxon culture was quite a strong culture shock for me as a Latino.
I knocked over a beggar’s drink and he yelled, and I was apologizing (like in a “my bad, bro”) and was going to give him a few euro coins, and my friends were pulling me away like this was the most absurd thing!
He wasn't dangerous and was very glad I stopped. Even if it was a ploy by always having a drink on the sidewalk to be knocked over, I was going to use the change on drugs too and still would because i had more change.
And where the hell are the non-smokers hiding?
That said...NY's Central Park doesn't have shit on Tiergarten. Literally one of the most beautiful places I've been on the planet.
Someone said it too! I have had few arguments with people, mostly New Yorkers, over this.
I'd kind of consider that a selling point. Berlin is cool and is different from the rest of the country. But I guess whatever floats your boat.
It's why so many people flock to large cities - you feel less like an 'outsider' because the population of these cities is so varied.
Also, it is really not true that you can truly integrate, even in Berlin, without speaking German.
You do need to somehow actively engage yourself with the community though to make this work. Strongly recommend working from a coworking as much as possible. It forces you to frequently meet new people, gives you day-to-day language practice, and really helps to build a network of small connections that eventually power your social life long-term.
For all its flaws, the US (and Canada) are societies built around inclusion. Anyone can become American or Canadian and they have. In North America, you are allowed to retain your original identity and flaunt your culture. In Europe, you must become only French, or only Dutch or only Italian. Your original identity is often erased.
Europe is a society fractured along lines of ethnicity and don't let anyone here tell you that ethnicity is not a huge part of identity. In europe, you are merely tolerated, you will never truly integrate and be accepted as "one of us". This is very evident in the words of non-white footballers like Ziyech and Ozil, one of whom is an EU citizen but plays for an African country. "Us" in the European context involves a specific ethnicity and this fact is very evident to people of colour in Europe.
You can certainly find individual europeans who buck this trend but the overall pressure from society is very different and this is the aspect a lot of people miss.
While europe's quality of life is great, what i'm getting at is a long-term problem that cannot be solved. And mind you, this is true everywhere in the old world as every society there is built around ethnicity.
I have seen so many cases of both cases here in Europe.
I am arguing that in a society based around ethnicity, ethnicity is another important part of societal acceptance.
This is not harsh, this is reality. Do you remember the reaction from French media and even the French ambassador to the US when a comedian pointed out that Africans won the 2018 football world cup? The defining characteristic of all their reactions was an attempt to erase or deny the African origins of footballers like Pogba, Kante, Kounde, Ben Yedder etc.
Which I suppose says something: maybe race concerns are so highlighted in the US precisely because we do aim to be more inclusive over all.
- Largest sacrifice is not visiting family as often
- Came here because my wife is English
The UK is close enough to the US that things seem almost normal, but lots of subtly different things. The biggest thing is the culture, the English tend to be quieter, more reserved, and that manifests in a lot of different ways.
I speak Spanish, but not Italian. Italy was very difficult to find housing and communicate, Spain was a bit easier, but Spanish culture is very different than US culture and had some very surprising things. It would be good to be familiar with any culture you dive into.
Northern Europe tends to have a larger percentage of English speakers, so basic day to day things are easier to do (like finding housing).
The most difficult thing is probably a bit of "outsider" feeling and the language barrier in other countries, but there are lots of Americans in the UK to help ease that, and UK culture is easier to get used to than some of the others, especially if you have an English partner
- Social life. Yes, modern technology makes it easier than ever to keep touch with friends from across the globe, but you need to expect to lose some relationships there. Not all friendships can survive the distance. The time zone difference also makes it annoying to keep in touch (e.g. you will be finishing a day's work and wanting to get in touch with friends, but their day has just started).
- Transportation. Now I don't know how you feel about cars but this was a huge win for me. I have driving and public transportation in Europe is usually very good. My driver's license has actually expired a few years back and I do not miss it. - Compensation. You simply won't find jobs that pay as much as the ones you can find in Silicon Valley (or perhaps in the major American cities). This won't necessarily be all that base. See my next point;
- Reasonably good public services in general. This will of course vary between countries, but you can expect to find reasonably good public services all around Europe. Healthcare is included in this but it can sometimes be a bit cumbersome to get an appointment with the right kind of doctor (you need to first go through a general practitioner who will refer you to a speciality). This can be mitigated however. See next point;
- Cheaper healthcare in general. Even if you opt for the convenience of private healthcare, you can expect to find it waaaay cheaper than in the US. Your job with also offer you health insurance which will cover most of your expenses making having access to private healthcare really affordable.
- Job safety. I guess this varies with the state you live in, but in Europe you are likely to find that the labour laws work more in your favour than in the US. This can paradoxically get annoying for you in a few very particular situations, but all in all, it's nice to feel safe this way.
- Homesickness is real and there's not much you can do about it. You will long for your home, for that old group of friends you used to hang out with, for that spot you used to go when you needed some time for yourself. Also, seeing the people you left behind moving on with their lives will feel weird.
- You will gain a lot of safety. Now I have no idea where in the US you are, but I bet that a somewhat good neighbourhood in Europe will be safer. I came from a particularly dangerous place (doubt you will find a place as dangerous in the US) so this was a huge win for me.
- You will come to appreciate a different kind of life than what you are used to. I don't know how to explain this, but the way of life in Europe is very different from the one in the Americas. Life goals and such are all very different. This will of course vary from country to country.
- You will come to appreciate a lot of things about the US that you didn't appreciate before. I guess this is just a natural consequence of gaining perspective. Nowhere is perfect and nowhere is fully bad.
Nothing strictly necessary, by definition, but lots of perks.
It's worth bearing in mind too that private healthcare is also _much_ cheaper in Europe than the US. In Spain for example I can get private healthcare + dental with zero copay for about €70 a month.
I strongly recommend watching the Not Just Cars youtube channel to understand the issues of US travel infrastructure.
By far the biggest sacrifices are family, friends and social network.
However, the opportunities for growth and learning far outweigh the cons.
Staying connected with people in different time zones can be challenging, but technology provides so many solutions.
For example I use FaceTime to talk with family. It doesn’t cost anyone anything (if they are connected to WIFI) and I don’t have to deal with the cost for international calls.
Building a new social network is hard. Meeting people (especially now) is hard. You will want to dedicate a large portion of time to put yourself in environments that can allow you to meet people, who will hopefully become friends.
The growth and learning opportunities are life changing and I think it is certainly worth trying to live and work abroad for a couple of years.
I can try to answer any questions or clarify if anyone has any more questions.
With a skilled workers visa you are eligible to apply for permanent residency after 3 years, and for citizenship after 7 years. Norway does allow duel-citizenship.
If we stay, and continue to learn Norwegian, we could (in theory) have duel citizenship in 4 more years.
I moved to Norway to work for a specific Norwegian employer and already had them lined up before moving to Norway. If you are a software engineer or developer, the market here in Oslo is in demand for skilled professionals.
If you have a valid visa, you have access to all the social benefits here in Norway. It does take a couple of months before you are in the system.
With a skilled workers visa, I also have the flexibility to switch employers (as long as I continue to work as a software engineer/developer) without having to reapply. However, I’m not allowed to freelance or have a side business here in Norway.
For context, I am considering moving back to the US.
Biggest sacrifices: Pay is kind of a huge one. There are very few companies (even global ones) that pay the same in Europe as they do in the US. If I moved back to the US with my current company, I would get a ~70k/year increase in salary. Social situation is the other big one. It's hard to ever feel like you totally fit in as an expat.
Biggest gains: Quality of life is generally higher - food is better (quality, not taste, Munich's food scene kind of sucks), public transportation is better, healthcare is largely better (although again, a little weird in Germany). 6 weeks of vacation as a baseline in most places and unlimited sick leave. Generally more of an emphasis on work/life balance and taking time for yourself.
This is assuming I get paid the same but somethings just differ a little. If I was paid market rates in Europe - I’d be probably get $200K+ less than I do now and that’s not insignificant…
The problem with health care in the US is for middle / middle low earners.
If you’re very poor you qualify for Medicaid, but if you don’t, you might have a crappy expensive insurance plan that also has a high deductible, so you might pay a big chunk of your income to health care in a bad year. For techies, the cost is minimal. The system is extremely unequal.
And frankly, the $70k/year thing doesn't even count the increased bonus ranges or increased raises you get from that base salary increase.
I moved to the US because the earning potential as a software engineer is simply so much higher than anywhere else, it's ridiculous. Compared to Australia in particular where up until 2003 or so the standard of living was exceedingly high. But now the cost of living in Australia, particularly in local earning potential terms, is actually awful.
So, Europe. I lived in 3 places (the UK, Switzerland, Germany). All of these places are different and that's the first thing you should know. The UK isn't Italy. Spain isn't Estonia. Many non-Americans have this view that the US is all one place. Anyone who lives here knows that's not true. LA isn't Omaha. NYC isn't Kansas. Europe is no different. In some ways this gap is even wider because there are many language barriers too.
The UK is a hybrid between continental Europe and the US. I found working there to be horrible. High cost of living, low (compared to the US) earning potential and the whole tech recruitment industry there is the worst I've ever experienced. I lived in London in the early 2000s and it was expensive then. It's like 2-3x that now. Unreal.
Even somewhere like Germany isn't homogenous. NRW isn't Bavaria which isn't Berlin or the former East.
I'd say the biggest thing is this: in the US there is a pervasive fear that your entire existence could be wiped out. Worse, many feel like many others actively seek this destruction. Obviously healthcare is one cause here but I think it goes deeper. America, particularly Corporate America, is very dog eat dog. Tech is a little better than this but not by much.
I'd say this is partially true in the UK but less so in continental Europe. Like I never found anyone questioning your "loyalty" to the company (for example) if you took a vacation. it was actually expected. There was less of people telling you how to live your life and feeling like you were telling them how to live theirs.
Don't get me wrong: there are rules you need to live by, more than most Americans will be used to (eg you'll be in for a shock when you try and figure out where, when and how to recycle anything in Switzerland or Germany).
The best way I can describe this is that the default position for anything in the US, the UK and Australia is you can do whatever you want unless it's expressly forbidden. Continental Europe is the opposite: you're only allowed to do what's expressly allowed. This makes society function but many Americans will chafe against this.
Houses and apartments will be way smaller in Europe than Americans are used to. You will need to use public transportation. If you try and drive everywhere then unless you live somewhere rural you will have a bad time. Many European city-dwellers get by just fine with no car at all.
If you have kids they won't have to do active shooter drills in schools. That's a uniquely American problem.
What you gain by living in any under culture is you realize how many of the things you believe aren't universal. They're just arbitrarily chosen norms. This can apply to the smallest of things like when you can go shopping and what sort of shop you need to find something (eg alcohol is only sold in selection locations in Australia but in the UK every supermarket and off-license will sell it).
What you should gain is some perspective that working like a dog because you need that health insurance and you've decided you need to save $500,000 per child to put them through college isn't universal. It's not even normal.
As far as social aspects go, this varies a lot. For example, I found the Swiss Germans to be extremely aloof (to non-Swiss). I found Germans (at least in the northwest) to be incredibly friendly. The UK is a mixed bag. London in s rat race and you'll be judged on what you have way more...
It goes even further than this. It’s a problem for the employer if the employer doesn’t use their vacation time.
It's very difficult to compare things like housing, social life and salary without knowing where you're coming from and where you're considering going. Countries in Europe have GDPs per capita ranging from under $5,000/year to over $100,000/year.
Really one of the few things you can say context-free is: you'll have more vacation in virtually any European country.
It's also very likely the healthcare, social systems (unemployment, day-care, etc.) and public transit will be saner. But again, you're comparing two very large, diverse places, and it's hard to reason about them in such generalities.
In tech, at least, this probably is no longer true. In my experience most of the bigger companies have been moving to unlimited vacation. I'm pretty sure that someone in upper management did the math and concluded that employees granted unlimited vacation actually end up taking fewer days than if they are metered.
>most of the bigger companies have been moving to unlimited vacation
>concluded that employees granted unlimited vacation actually end up taking fewer days than if they are metered
It sounds to me like you just argued against yourself.
Also, again, what you're calling "most tech companies" I assume is "a few on the west coast", and while that's a useful perspective, it's difficult to fit into a discussion where the granularity is "the US", where it certainly is not standard.
While I had a lower salary, I explored the world in my 20s by having a moderate amount of disposable income and a lot of free time.
Funny that you put it this way. That's the reason why some of cousins came back to Mexico from the US: They feel the US is very strict and there's a lot of rules, while over here in Mexico you are free to do whatever you want.
Europe has 3x the population density of the US, so this definitely tracks. Europeans (and some US city-dwellers) have so much trouble understanding the popularity of the car here, because they don't get the scale of the wilderness. I routinely hop in my car and in under 10 minutes I'm in places that public transportation will never reach. I can't even fathom how terrible the quality of life would become for me if I had to rely on public transit. Great if I'm going downtown, but I rarely do...
I miss America's food and diversity and dynamism. It took being here to learn that those things are real. I also miss true deep wilderness, something much rarer in Western Europe.
What have I gained? A saner, simpler, more human-scale life. Pleasure. Security. Not having to hustle. Most of the misery I see in my friends and family in the US has material causes that barely exist here. Especially everything having to do with young children.
London driving is still necessary if you want to do anything out of town. It's super spread out and despite the Tube being reliable, it doesn't really run at night. London is so huge it's unlikely your friends will live much less than an hour away from you. The roads are tiny and civil engineering here post-dates most of the construction so it's mayhem compared to driving in the US. However, you can get the hang of it.
The NHS is great for (1) the bottom end, basic stuff with a straightforward solution like a broken arm and (2) the high-end emergency stuff like childbirth and cardiac arrest. Assuming you have reasonable health insurance in the US, the NHS falls flat for any kind of non-emergency, non-routine procedure. You'll need to pay retail to get the same care which is about 1.5x what the same procedure would cost cash in the US. Otherwise you'll learn the NHS's "holistic" solution to your problem. You will have the comfort of knowing the less well off aren't in dire straights paying for basic healthcare. If you think it's "free" though, see below.
Taxes are out of control. In addition to about a 50% income tax, most goods and services are also subject to a "value added tax" of 20%. Compensation is also about 60% of the US version. So in exchange for the NHS, you get an "everything is expensive" mentality, and it's super common to hear well-to-do folks complain about the slightest expenses. It's actually very socialist for being one of the largest capitalist democracies in the world.
The law here is much less clear, and somewhat "equity-based" although followed. For example, an individual has recently been convicted of the crime of owning the Anarchists Cookbook. Penalties are less severe.
Real estate costs are 1.5-2x those of an average US city and 1.25x those of New York. While new construction is made to last longer than its US counterparts, e.g., using a lot of brick, most of it has already lasted longer than its US counterpart. In other words, in London there isn't much new construction. Instead, it's a ton of 100+ year-old homes built with period materials and including 10, 20 and 30-year "extensions" strapped on.
The food is generally lackluster except a few categories like Indian. Forget pizza or Mexican food exists.
People are about as friendly as anywhere.
The weather is almost unbearable. It's always somewhat cloudy. There may be a few consecutive days in September that are clear, but any more than 3 and people will start complaining about how "it's boiling out". In the Summer, while it does warm up in direct sunlight, you don't get continental heating and the stable warm temperatures it brings. So you might find yourself wearing shorts out in the morning and wrapping up in a blanket later in the day. You'll note people wear lots of layers.
Italian Pizza in London is better than in all of the US maybe bar Manhattan (unless you want deep-dish "pizza"). Same for all Asian food from Indian/Chinese/Thai/Vietnamese. You are right for Mexican food though.
- Europe is very different, not a country and not even a union (parts of Europe are NOT in European Union)
- Northern Europe has cold climate, more difficult languages, higher taxes and usually better services
- in Southern Europe people are a lot more relaxed (some can confuse that with lazy, but it is not), a lot friendlier but poorer
- in Germany and Austria it is very important to speak the language well in order to integrate. They are also very strict in many ways (lots of rules and regulations).
- most of France is really nice; salaries are a bit low
- Switzerland has top salaries and life standards. It is probably the best place to live if you are highly qualified.
- the Netherlands and Belgium have pretty bad weather. In the Netherlands most people speak a very good English
- Eastern Europe has lower salaries and cost of living, but imported products (an iPhone or a Tesla car) are very expensive. However people are friendly, life is accessible and the nature is great if you are into it: lots of hills and mountains to hike, access is permitted in most places. Criminality is in general extremely low for violent crimes, robbery and corruption are fairly common in some places.
- Poland and Hungary have some right wing governments that are not very popular with the EU politicians, but for the citizens is not really a problem (except abortion restrictions in Poland, but that is a sensitive topic for a very religious country)
- Ukraine is not a good place yet, not enough English speakers, but it may improve in the next 10 years. Belarus is not a good idea, full stop. Moldova is very poor. Albania is nice, but the language is a barrier and the country is quite poor. Montenegro is soo tiny. Other than these 5 countries, Europe is OK to live a decent life, especially if you have family. Even less known countries like Slovenia are still nice if you like that kind of small country with lots of mountains.
I am French but have been working 12 years for a very large US company , spent a lot of time in the US, go friends there - an witnessed/helped several Americans moving to France.
Salary and healthcare were already covered. The fact that over a 3 days drive across Europe you visit 4 or 5 countries with vastly different cultures is a big plus. And by vastly I mean really vastly. We've been in constant wars for 2000+ years and this created a very nice and specific melting pot + cultural differences.
School will be very different. In France you will have a more formalized way of education (which is not a good thing), but also a very liberal one. Children will be drinking tap water starting at kindergarten and and stay like this their whole life. They won't (usually) go to school on Wednesday.
The office will be less politically correct. You will have people discussing politics and religion - though this became less outspoken the last 10 years or so.
You will have good baguettes and average bread - but still eons better than the average US bread.
Bureaucracy is mcu better than the stereotype. But not good either. You have to learn the power of the "pffff" sound you make with your eyebrows up - which means "I understand that this is the rule, but you know, I have to do/get/send that and it is a huge problem if I don't". Many foreigners foolishly assume that a "no" means "this is not possible".
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pae2AMnmUVA for the more scientific approach to how to be French when you are not.
PROS
- the weather if you like hot weather. It can be quite windy, but going for a picnic on the beach in February has its nice aspects
- there is a techhnopole at Sophia-Antipolis where they hire on a regular basis
- skiing: the Alps are close, or the Pyrenées - depending on where you are
- the views are really nice and vary a lot
CONS:
- the weather, it is too hot :)
- road communication is complicated, public transports are not great either
- prices of housing are high (depends on the place, obviously)
My preference would be places such as Nantes or Rennes (western part of France), or the western coast of the Atlantic (below Brittany: Charente Maritime, Vendée, ...)
I have actually been to a couple of places in (Eastern) Europe where I was told not to drink the tap water.
That’s very interesting. Do French people typically try to set up some care arrangement, or just leave the kids at home? When I grew up in Poland, if my school was doing that, my parents would most likely just have us stay at home alone (starting from grade 1), but I imagine this would be rather uncommon thing to do in US these days.
There are also city-ran "youth centers" (centre de loisirs) where you can park your child for that day.
Would recommend/10, AMA.
I think the biggest shock was just how different classroom French and real-life French is. I studied up to B2.4 level French back in Sydney, and folks just speak so much faster here.
Also, the food is significantly higher quality than back home (even the supermarket processed crap)
Generally speaking, as a kid, I had a way, way more liberal education than today.
There must have been something seriously wrong with that water - water in France is classified as food and follows very strict regulations.
TL;DR - I highly recommend doing this move if you can afford to do it (financially and socially).
Where do I live: Central London
What's the biggest sacrifice: I kept my job in the move and took a ~25% paycut in my job and got slightly worse hours. But the biggest sacrifice was being an ocean away from my friends and family. Oh and the clothes dryers suck here :-)
What have I gained: So much. I got to live in a city of 10M+ people with every possible amenity and activity you could ever want. I got to travel to so many parts of Europe that I never would have gone to otherwise. I learned how to make friends intentionally, something I haven't done since college. I learned how to work remotely effectively, something I thought I couldn't do. I learned how another country works day-to-day, which I think is hard to do without first-hand experience. I learned how to travel with last-minute plans (thanks Covid and RyanAir). I learned how much time I can spend alone with my wife in lockdown without going insane (infinite, so far!). In general I learned that we can live almost anywhere if we are determined to do it.
If it wasn't for my friends back in the US, I'd stay in London permanently. But after ~3 years in London we'll probably head back and try to resume our old life in some form. I hope that when I am older I can return, maybe I'll retire in Spain or send my kids to college in Europe.