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How will they be keeping talent? I heard workers in IT are paid low compared to other jobs and especially compared to similar jobs in North America, what stops
by Zdup 6y ago
How will they be keeping talent? I heard workers in IT are paid low compared to other jobs and especially compared to similar jobs in North America, what stops them. from just going to US/Canada?
- ginko 6y ago>what stops them. from just going to US/Canada? As an European working in a sector very close to the semiconductor industry my main reason is that I don't want to live in the US/Canada.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- AshamedCaptain 6y agoI might literally get double the salary just for moving to the US, and still I don't want it, either.
- chrisseaton 6y agoI think they mean 'going to' as in working for them. You can work for a US or Canadian company remotely. I've done it my whole career. I've never seen anything even remotely approaching a competitive offer from a European company. They can't compete. What incentive is there to work for a European company?
- WhoCaresLies 6y agoyou don't want workers in IT, look at the USA, other than silicon valey (1 state), they all hire from India, and the salary from other states are comparable to what you find elsewhere in the world, including China you want researchers, and EU has ton of them ;)
- duxup 6y agoIf this is because of security, is just having a bunch of researchers enough to provide for security?
- TulliusCicero 6y ago> you don't want workers in IT, look at the USA, other than silicon valey (1 state), they all hire from India, and the salary from other states are comparable to what you find elsewhere in the world, including China None of this is even close to true. What are you smoking that leads you to believe non-Silicon Valley US IT salaries are comparable to Chinese ones?
- killtimeatwork 6y agoHow much are senior software developers making in China?
- fakedang 6y agoDepending on the firm, loads actually, adjusted on a PPP basis.
- kube-system 6y agoTech salaries in the lowest wage areas in the US are comparable to western Europe. Wages in any major US metropolitan area are higher on average.
- robotnikman 6y agoI work in IT outside of the valley, and while I am not making SV money I am making enough to live comfortably and have good health coverage.
- tchalla 6y agoThere's value (not price) that EU provides which North America, does not. As long as they keep that value, EU will attract talent.
- ChuckNorris89 6y agoExcept that real estate in EU has value and also price, which, compared to local tech wages is quite a high price compared to the ratio in US. Just ask anyone living in Munich for example, how much a house there costs (almost 4 Million Euros[0]) and what the typical dev wages there look like, but sit down first so you don't fall down. Average property price in Munich is basically the same as in the Bay Area (aprox. $10k/square meter in both cities with Munich reaching up to $35K/square meter in the desirable areas[0]!!!), but salaries are half that at best. [0]https://www.ft.com/content/9ba4873a-60f3-11e9-9300-0becfc937c37 https://www.ft.com/content/9ba4873a-60f3-11e9-9300-0becfc937...
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoWell for one, I and everyone I know happen to live here. I guess if someone can suffer the US' shitty conditions, I guess there's nothing stopping them from going there... except for the US's stringent immigration policies. Can't just hop over the pond to go work there, and I'm fairly sure it's easier for a US citizen to work here than the other way around. Of course, that too is deincentivized thanks to US tax laws (still having to pay income taxes even though you don't live or work in the US).
- jariel 6y ago"if someone can suffer the US' shitty conditions, " So crap, that people around the world are fighting to get in, what for those jobs that pay 2-3x, and real exciting projects to work on, and for the most part people that actually don't care about your funny accent. It's unwise to discount one of the US's fundamental, perennial and systematic advantages as somehow a drawback. Like it or not - the US has been sucking in global talent since it's inception.
- adrianN 6y agoMany companies are specifically opening engineering offices in Europe because it keeps getting harder to attract foreign talent to the US.
- claudeganon 6y agoSome people prefer to live in societies with some semblance of basic humanity, where people don't go bankrupt and die from treatable illnesses. Or are just generally more rational than the average American.
- jariel 6y agoThis is clearly bigotry, it's really not appropriate. (FYI, I'm not an American - though I've lived in a few states, and also in two major European countries for quite some time, including having worked for a branch of the EU government.)
- tomcooks 6y agoFree healthcare, somehow reasonable housing prices outside of huge city centers, proximity to elderly parents, generally higher quality of life, to name few reasons.
- ntsplnkv2 6y agoAmericans who are able to get jobs in the tech industry do not have to worry about expensive healthcare, at all. The US is very much a tale of two countries - but people here making a lot of money have a great quality of life.
- pablooliva 6y agoYou are right about the part about making money in the US and being ok. I would argue though that the higher standard of living in Europe across the board has a compounding affect. When you know that your neighbors are taken care of and you don't see as much social rot out in the streets, you tend to feel happier, less stressed, more willing to continue supporting and being a part of your community. At least that is my personal experience as an American living in Germany. In addition, it is not just about making money, you get a lot more time off, holidays and as many sick days as the doctor says that you need, within reason of course.
- claudeganon 6y agoSome people don't want to maintain the kind off dissonance required to turn a blind eye to the widespread failings and cruelty of American society. If I had to choose between going to sleep at night knowing that the people around me wouldn't be made bankrupt or homelessness should they have the misfortune of becoming sick, over circumstances where I was slightly more wealthy, but forced to justify all this, I'd choose the former every time.
- ntsplnkv2 6y agoThere are millions of Americans working to help others, pushing for more socialist policies. But not everyone agrees, and in our country, you have the right to disagree and vote for who you want. I find the holier than thou attitude based on European insecurity quite entertaining. Europe is great - you don't have to denigrate other places. But don't doubt for a second how Europe got there - through colonial genocide.
- melenaboija 6y ago- Not everybody from Europe wants to go to North America - US specifically starts to feel weird for non US citizens - There are immigration laws
- yostrovs 6y ago" US specifically starts to feel weird for non US citizens". - The US is the largest importer of immigrants now and for many decades prior. Weird, right?
- gumby 6y agoThat’s because it’s large; on a per capita basis that’s not true.
- melenaboija 6y agoWeird for non citizens to live in US, not weird that one of the countries with highest capacity to absorb immigration and with highest salaries in the world has big immigration flows. Besides that I think some people from US might be biased on the feeling of Europe towards US. If you just know Europeans living in US you will have a wrong perception, mostly because Europeans living in US are here because they want to do so not because they were forced to move.
- madeofpalk 6y ago> what stops them. from just going to US/Canada? reply Don't be so quick to assume that people want to move to and live in US/Canada.
- bvcvbuiy 6y agoMore demand for qualified labour will tend to increase the salary of people offering these skills. Salaries are not written in stone and evolve depending on market conditions.
- Jacqued 6y agoIn most places the cost of living is pretty low compared to the US, so even the admittedly lower engineer salaries in Europe can give you a very comfortable lifestyle. Eg. in France if you make 60-80k and live anywhere other than Paris you're doing great. For the top end of talent there's always freelancing, with a different, higher band of earning levels.
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago>Eg. in France if you make 60-80k and live anywhere other than Paris you're doing great. Except that how many devs outside of Paris make 60-80k? Most French engineers I met in Germany left France because of low wages outside of Paris which is so expensive that most of your wage gains evaporate anyway unless you have a baller job in finance or management consulting.
- Jacqued 6y agoIn my anecdotal experience 60k is typical for developers with 5 years of experience in larger cities, but often you do need to get into management to reach 80k. I think it’s also getting better as all employers need to compete on salaries with remote offers from companies in Paris. I’ll admit it though, if it was not for the ludicrous immigration laws I’d have probably moved to the Bay Area a long time ago.
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago>I’ll admit it though, if it was not for the ludicrous immigration laws I’d have probably moved to the Bay Area a long time ago. That's kind of a catch-22 right there. If it weren't for those "ludicrous immigration laws", tech salaries in the Bay Area would get watered down significantly while becoming even more expensive to live in, making the whole place less attractive to emigrate to over time, eventually reaching a state of equilibrium with wages probably close to EU level. Think of it like a fancy nightclub. The more exclusive it is, the more people are willing to queue outside for hours for a chance to get in.
- cleansy 6y agoBesides not wanting to work/live in the US/Canada for cultural reasons (I personally don't want to raise children where school shootings are so frequent that not all of them are even reported in the news anymore), there is also the visa situation, natural disasters (earth quakes, raging wildfires on the west coast, hurricanes on the east..) and then some.
- lprd 6y agoI grew up in the US and now live in France (been here for 8 years now). I assure you, it's not that scary.
- _prototype_ 6y agoI'm in the US. The company I work for also hires remote contractors from Europe. We do basically the same thing (software development). One guy I'm close with, and we've talked about our salaries. I make 200k My friend in Europe makes 30k. The difference is astounding.
- czzr 6y agoEastern Europe, presumably?
- _prototype_ 6y agoCentral Europe actually
- Thimothy 6y agoFor the unaware, Central Europe is a narrow band that comprises Czechs, Slovaks and Polish. Who can get very offended if you even dare to suggest that they belong to Eastern Europe.
- trasz 6y agoThe term "Central Europe" makes sense when talking about stuff common to Central Europe, in particular Germany. Otherwise, the term you want here is Eastern Europe. And yes, there is this particular kind of people who feel offended by this. Largely the same people who get offended by gay marriage. Why should we care?
- ohples 6y agoI work in IT in the US, and if someone offered me a job with a visa in Europe, with the potential for permanent stay. Even if it was 1/2 my current salary I would probably take it, depending on the country it was in.
- birdsbirdsbirds 6y agoApply and let the company handle the paperwork.
- gumby 6y agoHaving lived in both (and being a citizen of neither): quality of life. Your headline salary in the Us is higher but disposable income is often lower. You spend more time managing your life in the USA with less time left to live it. Some people enjoy that of course. I do find the working environment better in the US, and I enjoy my work, but on most other parameters it’s inferior.
- filoleg 6y agoI agree with your overall sentiment, to each their own. There are definitely a good number of valid reasons for why someone would choose to stay in EU despite lower salary. However, there is one thing you mentioned I have an issue with. >Your headline salary in the US is higher but disposable income is often lower Even rough napkin math doesn't check out here. Let's say you are a senior engineer in Bay Area/SF (one of the most expensive places to live in the US, so I am not going for some outliers like Austin or Seattle where the math ends up being even more in favor of the employee), and you make $300k/yr total comp at one of the big tech companies (which isn't even that good for a senior engineer at Google/Netflix/Dropbox/Uber/etc., this is rather a low end of the comp at that level at those companies, https://levels.fyi https://levels.fyi has a pretty accurate data on compensation that matches with what I've seen in real life myself). I used one of the online calculators to see how much you take home after taxes in CA (https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-paycheck-calculator#Y7Px6O7R5I https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-paycheck-calculator#...), it came out to around $7.5k semi-monthly or $15k/mo. So you get $15k in cash every month after taxes. Let's say you want to live on your own in a new really nice 1bd apartment in the middle of the city. I will overestimate and say that you will pay $5k/mo on rent+utilities. After all of that, you got $10k left. Let's say you spend $2k/mo on food and other various random small expenses (again, overestimating here for the sake of the argument, realistically you will spend much less on both food and housing). After all of that you got $8k of disposable income left, and that's while living a very good quality of life (most engineers I know in Bay Area who make that much don't spend even nearly this much on housing and normal expenses btw, they are putting it in savings/401k/etc. in hopes of retiring early and such). Employer-provided insurance is usually amazing. My personal one is fully paid for by employer, and my out of pocket yearly maximum is $2.5k (so even in the worst case scenario, I won't ever spend more than that in a calendar year on health expenses). Also, most of the people in senior positions at those companies I listed make noticeably more than $300k/mo. I guess the bottom line is, is there even a way in EU to have $8k+/mo of disposable income as an IC software dev? How difficult is it to make it happen? From my experience in the Bay Area and Seattle, it isn't the easiest thing on earth, and not everyone in those places makes that much, but it is far from "special" or rare.
- joelbluminator 6y agoThey can try making the wage gap not huge, it doesn't have to be 100% U.S money, 60-70% is probably enough. Not everyone is gonna migrate for 30% more cash. Some will, some won't.
- jason0597 6y ago>what stops them. from just going to US/Canada? reply For the US, the thing that stops them is the incredibly hard immigration process. The US is a very protectionist labour market. I've looked into it myself as a Greek, and it's very fucking hard.
- _visgean 6y agoThere is a lot of anecdote based arguments here but I think its better to look at different indices trying to capture these kind of trends: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report - http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/life-satisfaction/ http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/life-satisfaction/ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where-to-be-born_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where-to-be-born_Index - https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.jsp https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.j... While none of these rankings are perfect they show clear trend that some of the European countries are doing better than US. Also you should keep in mind that money is not everything. (Which is why we have the above stats anyway). People have friends and family and a way of life that they might not be willing to abandon. As other have mentioned before migration to US is non-trivial and requires quite and effort. In contrast to that you can move much easier within EU. Which is what is happening anyway - if you want high salary you go to Switzerland / London / Paris or any other high income area and you can do so without being treated as an immigrant.
- 908B64B197 6y agoThey won't. It'll be a stepping stone toward getting a job at the big players. At best, they'll keep the B players around because they won't pass the stricter bar for immigration.