5 ms·

Europe does well to keep talents in relative poverty compared to our peers in the US. Most IT people are in the 50-60k/pa bracket.Some are in 80k and anything

Europe does well to keep talents in relative poverty compared to our peers in the US. Most IT people are in the 50-60k/pa bracket.Some are in 80k and anything > 100k/pa is an exception. And this is usually with progressive taxation starting with 30% and going upwards. Most of the good housing costs > 400k and we are talking small apartments because it's Europe and if you live in the suburbs you give up all the great infrastructure. Moving around in Europe is a nightmare especially if your spouse is in a field that requires intermediate/native level of the local language.

enriquto 6y ago
Are you joking? 50k is not "relative poverty" by any definition.
- dijit 6y ago
  This is such a complicated topic that it's hard to make generalisations that apply in all cases. The US is similar to Europe in that standards can be wildly different between states/countries. 50k EUR in Estonia is a lot different to 50k in Sweden. But I would say, on average, that the difference is that it's cheaper to have a good life in Europe. If you earn 50k in Sweden, it would roughly give me the same QoL as a person living on 150k in NYC (or 80k in London!), and if I earned 60k in Sweden then it would feel roughly the same as 200k in NYC, because the costs don't scale linearly. But the difference between me, an IT professional on a "good" wage (which, actually does feel like a good wage btw) and a Waitress at a restaurant is not so incredibly vast as to make sure that the waitress lives in perpetual poverty. The gap is smaller and because of it the wealth feels attainable and people are a bit more content. Contentedness is far better than the "dollar amount" of capital you have, wealth is feeling good about your life, some people conflate the fact that it costs a lot of money to feel content and secure in the USA with the rest of the world. I've lived in Finland, Sweden, Estonia and I was raised in the UK. Income equality has a long way to go in the UK, so what I say does not apply there at all.
  - distances 6y ago
    I see you're hopping the Nordic countries. How similar are they in reality? Is it fair to place all them in the same bucket as always is done in these discussions? What made you move from one to another?
    - piva00 6y ago
      I'm not OP but I live in Sweden for almost 6 years now, had a Norwegian girlfriend and have traveled around, so I will tell how I see from my perspective. The Nordic countries share some common social philosophies, economic models and ways of life but each one leans in different ways in numerous aspects: culturally, economically, socially. The impression I get is that all stem from a common "root" but have diverged quite a bit when you see them from the inside. Bundling them up together is a useful mental model for some approximations, some aspects of the day-to-day life are similar but I believe that's where it stops. A good extrapolation would be to look at a more extreme version of this phenomena, like with Spain and Portugal, where history and culture are quite intermingled but each can also be quite different to the other. The Nordics are a bit less extreme on their differences but it's a good analogy to lean to, I believe.
    - dijit 6y ago
      Estonia wants to be Finland but has a large (relatively right wing?) Russian minority. Finland wants to be left alone. Sweden wants to be the role model of the world, and has increasing divisions between right and left (because if you talk about immigration you're branded racist immediately). Denmark is a lot less tolerant than it might be made out to be by being grouped with the nordics (which sounds like I'm saying it's a bad thing). They have at-will employment and put up barriers to people migrating to the country. The morals/religions typically follow along similar lines (heavy promotion of work/life balance and raising a family) but economically they differ largely and politically there are minor but important differences between the countries.
  - shankr 6y ago
    > But I would say, on average, that the difference is that it's cheaper to have a good life in Europe. If you earn 50k in Sweden, it would roughly give me the same QoL as a person living on 150k in NYC (or 80k in London!), and if I earned 60k in Sweden then it would feel roughly the same as 200k in NYC, because the costs don't scale linearly. These numbers seem quite off as far as I see it on numbeo. It's a factor of 1.5 that you need to multiply the Stockholm /Swedish salaries with to get the same standard of life in NYC. $150K in NYC should be something like ~$100K in Sweden. And $200K in NYC should be something like ~$133K in Sweden.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
jasonvorhe 6y ago
While IT salaries aren't much to brag about in Europe (though the big players start to ramp up their senior+ engineering salaries), you get free healthcare in some european countries and you don't risk getting shot by police based on your skincolor.
- EdwinLarkin 6y ago
  Free healthcare in Europe sucks.I usually go to my wife's home country to get superior and efficient healthcare (South Korea). In Europe at least in german speaking countries the healthcare is mediocre or subpar for what we pay for it in taxes.
  - RGamma 6y ago
    Just curious: what bad experience did you have? Long waiting times, bad diagnosis/treatment? Also, private insurance ("tax-paid", nvm)? Also at least Germany is a country with a relatively old population (median age 47.8). SK too (median age 43), but suicide rates in the elderly are way higher, which tells me there's problems with QoL. And achieving widespread decent QoL in an old population is quite costly.
- shankr 6y ago
  You get free healthcare in most part of the world if you work in IT. And usually it's not taken out of your salary. In EU you have to pay it out of your salaries.
seszett 6y ago
Good inner city housing is easy to find at much cheaper than 400k€ even in large cities of Western Europe. I'm talking about >150m² city houses here, not "small apartments" by any standards. Seeing how you consider 50-60k€ annual salary as "relative poverty" makes me think that your expectations are rather unrealistic. Indeed, a regular IT worker cannot buy a city palace and retire at 40 in Europe, so maybe that's what you consider poverty relative to even richer people. Also, moving around in Europe is easier than anywhere else (I should know...) and language is basically the only problem. While in the rest of the world, language is a relatively smaller problem compared to the administrative problems you have to face first (if you even can move at all to the country you want).
- EdwinLarkin 6y ago
  Language is not the only problem.It's the different rules that apply to the EU countries.Imagine you have non-EU spouse and they are basically constrained to one european country. Here the EU means nothing.
  - realityking 6y ago
    That’s not true, there’s an EU residence permit that transfers: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_resident_(European_Union) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_resident_(European... It’s relatively new (from 2006). I’m sure it will evolve over time to be even easier.
  - seszett 6y ago
    This is not different from outside the EU, though, which is my point. The EU is not perfect but moving within it is easier than moving between countries anywhere else in the world (outside of a few much smaller blocks).
  - piva00 6y ago
    EU permanent residency enables you to live in any EU country, you don't need citizenship to have freedom of movement in the EU.
piva00 6y ago
Your framing is the problem: the US is not the standard, the US is the outlier here. Given American society values based on individualism it's not that strange they get paid more but also don't have as much support from the government as most EU countries do. In that sense it's a choice of lifestyle, if you want to get rich but also suffer more risks doing that, go live in the US and try it out. For me, personally, coming from an Americanised society such as Brazil I much prefer living in a place where life is stable and comfortable, where I know I won't be left to die if I can't manage for any reason (usually health) to find and/or keep a job. I won't be living extremely comfortably but I won't end up as an addict thrown out in Mission District in SF to suffer alone. Different values, different views. The US is the outlier in pay, most of the EU tips into a more collectivist view. All in all, I much prefer the "relative poverty" of living in Sweden rather than getting 2-3x take-home pay while living in a stressful society such as the US. My peace of mind is very, very worth it.
- shankr 6y ago
  > All in all, I much prefer the "relative poverty" of living in Sweden rather than getting 2-3x take-home pay while living in a stressful society such as the US I don't get where you get the idea that all Americans are some hamsters spinning the wheel. Lot of IT jobs in USA are high-paying without the kind of stress you are talking about. And no they aren't getting rich to the extent that they are buying yachts or jets. On the opposite, lot of low paying stressful jobs exist in EU. > The US is the outlier in pay, most of the EU tips into a more collectivist view. Without much regard to the strength of different kind of economies around EU. A Spanish shouldn't be paying same price as a German has to pay without earning the same salary. This is big downside of EU that the collectivism you are talking about only works when they don't want to pay the salaries but still charge you the same price.

enriquto 6y ago

Are you joking? 50k is not "relative poverty" by any definition.

dijit 6y ago
This is such a complicated topic that it's hard to make generalisations that apply in all cases. The US is similar to Europe in that standards can be wildly different between states/countries. 50k EUR in Estonia is a lot different to 50k in Sweden. But I would say, on average, that the difference is that it's cheaper to have a good life in Europe. If you earn 50k in Sweden, it would roughly give me the same QoL as a person living on 150k in NYC (or 80k in London!), and if I earned 60k in Sweden then it would feel roughly the same as 200k in NYC, because the costs don't scale linearly. But the difference between me, an IT professional on a "good" wage (which, actually does feel like a good wage btw) and a Waitress at a restaurant is not so incredibly vast as to make sure that the waitress lives in perpetual poverty. The gap is smaller and because of it the wealth feels attainable and people are a bit more content. Contentedness is far better than the "dollar amount" of capital you have, wealth is feeling good about your life, some people conflate the fact that it costs a lot of money to feel content and secure in the USA with the rest of the world. I've lived in Finland, Sweden, Estonia and I was raised in the UK. Income equality has a long way to go in the UK, so what I say does not apply there at all.
- distances 6y ago
  I see you're hopping the Nordic countries. How similar are they in reality? Is it fair to place all them in the same bucket as always is done in these discussions? What made you move from one to another?
  - piva00 6y ago
    I'm not OP but I live in Sweden for almost 6 years now, had a Norwegian girlfriend and have traveled around, so I will tell how I see from my perspective. The Nordic countries share some common social philosophies, economic models and ways of life but each one leans in different ways in numerous aspects: culturally, economically, socially. The impression I get is that all stem from a common "root" but have diverged quite a bit when you see them from the inside. Bundling them up together is a useful mental model for some approximations, some aspects of the day-to-day life are similar but I believe that's where it stops. A good extrapolation would be to look at a more extreme version of this phenomena, like with Spain and Portugal, where history and culture are quite intermingled but each can also be quite different to the other. The Nordics are a bit less extreme on their differences but it's a good analogy to lean to, I believe.
  - dijit 6y ago
    Estonia wants to be Finland but has a large (relatively right wing?) Russian minority. Finland wants to be left alone. Sweden wants to be the role model of the world, and has increasing divisions between right and left (because if you talk about immigration you're branded racist immediately). Denmark is a lot less tolerant than it might be made out to be by being grouped with the nordics (which sounds like I'm saying it's a bad thing). They have at-will employment and put up barriers to people migrating to the country. The morals/religions typically follow along similar lines (heavy promotion of work/life balance and raising a family) but economically they differ largely and politically there are minor but important differences between the countries.
- shankr 6y ago
  > But I would say, on average, that the difference is that it's cheaper to have a good life in Europe. If you earn 50k in Sweden, it would roughly give me the same QoL as a person living on 150k in NYC (or 80k in London!), and if I earned 60k in Sweden then it would feel roughly the same as 200k in NYC, because the costs don't scale linearly. These numbers seem quite off as far as I see it on numbeo. It's a factor of 1.5 that you need to multiply the Stockholm /Swedish salaries with to get the same standard of life in NYC. $150K in NYC should be something like ~$100K in Sweden. And $200K in NYC should be something like ~$133K in Sweden.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

jasonvorhe 6y ago

While IT salaries aren't much to brag about in Europe (though the big players start to ramp up their senior+ engineering salaries), you get free healthcare in some european countries and you don't risk getting shot by police based on your skincolor.

EdwinLarkin 6y ago
Free healthcare in Europe sucks.I usually go to my wife's home country to get superior and efficient healthcare (South Korea). In Europe at least in german speaking countries the healthcare is mediocre or subpar for what we pay for it in taxes.
- RGamma 6y ago
  Just curious: what bad experience did you have? Long waiting times, bad diagnosis/treatment? Also, private insurance ("tax-paid", nvm)? Also at least Germany is a country with a relatively old population (median age 47.8). SK too (median age 43), but suicide rates in the elderly are way higher, which tells me there's problems with QoL. And achieving widespread decent QoL in an old population is quite costly.
shankr 6y ago
You get free healthcare in most part of the world if you work in IT. And usually it's not taken out of your salary. In EU you have to pay it out of your salaries.

seszett 6y ago

Good inner city housing is easy to find at much cheaper than 400k€ even in large cities of Western Europe. I'm talking about >150m² city houses here, not "small apartments" by any standards. Seeing how you consider 50-60k€ annual salary as "relative poverty" makes me think that your expectations are rather unrealistic. Indeed, a regular IT worker cannot buy a city palace and retire at 40 in Europe, so maybe that's what you consider poverty relative to even richer people. Also, moving around in Europe is easier than anywhere else (I should know...) and language is basically the only problem. While in the rest of the world, language is a relatively smaller problem compared to the administrative problems you have to face first (if you even can move at all to the country you want).

EdwinLarkin 6y ago
Language is not the only problem.It's the different rules that apply to the EU countries.Imagine you have non-EU spouse and they are basically constrained to one european country. Here the EU means nothing.
- realityking 6y ago
  That’s not true, there’s an EU residence permit that transfers: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_resident_(European_Union) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_resident_(European... It’s relatively new (from 2006). I’m sure it will evolve over time to be even easier.
- seszett 6y ago
  This is not different from outside the EU, though, which is my point. The EU is not perfect but moving within it is easier than moving between countries anywhere else in the world (outside of a few much smaller blocks).
- piva00 6y ago
  EU permanent residency enables you to live in any EU country, you don't need citizenship to have freedom of movement in the EU.

piva00 6y ago

Your framing is the problem: the US is not the standard, the US is the outlier here. Given American society values based on individualism it's not that strange they get paid more but also don't have as much support from the government as most EU countries do. In that sense it's a choice of lifestyle, if you want to get rich but also suffer more risks doing that, go live in the US and try it out. For me, personally, coming from an Americanised society such as Brazil I much prefer living in a place where life is stable and comfortable, where I know I won't be left to die if I can't manage for any reason (usually health) to find and/or keep a job. I won't be living extremely comfortably but I won't end up as an addict thrown out in Mission District in SF to suffer alone. Different values, different views. The US is the outlier in pay, most of the EU tips into a more collectivist view. All in all, I much prefer the "relative poverty" of living in Sweden rather than getting 2-3x take-home pay while living in a stressful society such as the US. My peace of mind is very, very worth it.

shankr 6y ago
> All in all, I much prefer the "relative poverty" of living in Sweden rather than getting 2-3x take-home pay while living in a stressful society such as the US I don't get where you get the idea that all Americans are some hamsters spinning the wheel. Lot of IT jobs in USA are high-paying without the kind of stress you are talking about. And no they aren't getting rich to the extent that they are buying yachts or jets. On the opposite, lot of low paying stressful jobs exist in EU. > The US is the outlier in pay, most of the EU tips into a more collectivist view. Without much regard to the strength of different kind of economies around EU. A Spanish shouldn't be paying same price as a German has to pay without earning the same salary. This is big downside of EU that the collectivism you are talking about only works when they don't want to pay the salaries but still charge you the same price.