4 ms·
Location, location, location; I live in .nl and with about €55k, I'm at the upper end of the job market here (14 years experience).
by NKCSS 10y ago
Location, location, location; I live in .nl and with about €55k, I'm at the upper end of the job market here (14 years experience).
- 8draco8 10y agoYou are right but you have to also consider US working hours. Apparently it's not unusual to work 60 hours a week while here in Europe we have ~40 hours working weeks. If I have to choose I would definately stay on my UK salary that is about half what this calculator is showing for my experience and keep 40hr working week.
- rkangel 10y agoDon't forget having more than 2 weeks of holiday a year. I could cope with 50-60 hours a week. I could not cope with only one proper holiday a year.
- dimino 10y ago> Apparently it's not unusual to work 60 hours a week That's unusual.
- walshemj 10y agoI used to work with a CTO who had worked in the Valley and in the UK and he said he got no more work out of people in the US than the UK. And bear in mind in the UK this was British Telecom with civil service type holidays and perks - working there did remind me of the Laundry Files :-)
- vmarsy 10y agoUnfortunately comparing European and US salaries is comparing apples to oranges. Not only there's vacation as other people mention, but most importantly and often ignored : tax rates and retirement. In those 55k, you also probably have a bigger tax bill, so it would be more fair to compare money that ends up in your pocket. Retirement: you probably have a national system, with a formula that tells: if you worked X years at salary Y, your retirement income will be Z. You might also have extra retirement plans if you want to save more. In the US, retirement pensions is not a thing (except maybe public servants etc?), So you're responsible of saving by yourself. The employer will sometime help (like for every dollar you put in your retirement plan, they'd match 50 cents, up to ~20k per year), and that money you put in the retirement plan is tax free, but the point is that it's money you theoritically should not access until retirement. With those 2 factors, the money you actually get to use is different, and then the cost of life is different: raising kids in the US until college, would be a different price than a kid in the Netherlands until the end of university.
- hellofunk 10y agoIncome tax for a California resident is quite a bit higher than Dutch income tax for most income brackets. Dutch income tax more closely resembles the tax bracket in midwest America. My income tax percent in Holland is slightly lower than it was in the U.S. and my pay is a bit higher than it was in the U.S.
- ricardobeat 10y agoAre we looking at the same Netherlands? A quick search tells me California's highest bracket is 13%. In NL you're lucky to get ~25% effective rate as a knowledge migrant, going steeply up to 52%.