Europe will not win race for ambitious people. I lived in Sweden for almost one year as an expat (I'm a software engineer). Now, I live in the Netherlands for

Europe will not win race for ambitious people. I lived in Sweden for almost one year as an expat (I'm a software engineer). Now, I live in the Netherlands for more than two years. I can say for sure that Europe is nowhere near Silicon Valley in terms of compensation for ambitious software engineers. Sweden went total nuts with taxes, anything above $6500 per month would be taxed at 55-60% tax rate. It's effectively cap to enforce equality of outcome. 60% tax doesn't mean that ultra-high salaries will be taxed at this rate. It means that ultra-high salaries will not exist in job market in the first place. The best Swedish startup threatens to leave Sweden because of regulatory and tax burden [1]. The Netherlands recognized importance of highly-skilled expats by introducing tax discounts called "30% ruling". I do respect their efforts to attract talent. That's why I moved from Sweden to the Netherlands in 2016. However, as non-EU citizen you can work only for publicly registered sponsors [2]. Usually, it's boring well-established companies. So I missed some cool opportunities due to this limitation. As I learned dutch local job market, I found that almost nobody will pay you 10'000 EUR per month. Aside from tax and regulatory burden in Europe, there are cultural things like Law of Jante [3]. I can't imagine how society with such mentality can attract highly ambitious people. Also, talking about money in Europe is kinda taboo. And dutch automatically repeat "money is not everything". It wouldb't annoy me if someone committed to work for open source software. Or being great painter. But when recruiter respond me "money is not everything" when I'm asking "too much", it annoys me a lot. With that in mind, I decided to abandon idea of living in Europe, getting citizenship, learning dutch language etc. It was tough decision for me but it's time to move on. It's not kind of a society where I want to spend rest of my life. Sorry dutch and swedes, I don't fit here. So I decided to move to Hong Kong. I've just got very lucrative job offer in Hong Kong (in HFT). The size of compensation is far beyond of what Europe can offer me. Now, I'm almost on par with US (I couldn't get into US because I don't have any degree). Now, I'm just waiting for my HK visa getting approved. You might troll me saying that, I'm whining. OK, I have answer to that. Just look at my net salary increases: Russia -> Sweden (2015) +28% Sweden -> Sweden (2015) +15% Sweden -> the Netherlands (2016) +63% the Netherlands -> Hong Kong (2018) +83% (and possible bonus up to 300% of yearly salaries!) I will work like crazy fanatic and in next six years I will be well over $1M of liquid net worth. So Europe lost me. Europe is perfect place for people who just want to work from 9 to 5 and put family as their top priority. It's not suited for risk takers. Links: https://www.thelocal.se/20160412/spotify-founders-sweden-is-heading-in-the-wrong-direction https://www.thelocal.se/20160412/spotify-founders-sweden-is-... https://ind.nl/en/work/Pages/Highly-skilled-migrant.aspx https://ind.nl/en/work/Pages/Highly-skilled-migrant.aspx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante