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"Yes, healthcare and the cost of living are more expensive in the US" They should add, [but not that much more expensive].

• Barrin92 6y ago
  if you have children it can be quite a lot. A few friends of mine moved to the US to work and they're paying tens of thousands per year for two kids childcare / education, and they have two cars. Meanwhile in a lot of European cities good schooling and childcare is either free or heavily subsidised and you might get away with one car, if you need one at all. It seems like in a lot of the tech hubs in the US you need to make ~120k+ for a middle-class family lifestyle whereas in almost all European cities with 50-70k you're probably good.
  • vmception 6y ago
    this article is about the $320K compensation packages and their volatility, these expenses just do not scale at all. the point of the article mentioning the "but cost of living" rebuttal was specifically to point this out, they just didn't finish the sentence to drive the point home.
    • Barrin92 6y ago
      that's an example of one particular dutch engineer though. It's not representative. The average salary in SF for an engineer is about 120k-160k. So the 300k guy is in that last segment of the 'tripolar' camp the author talks about, but that is a small one.
      • vmception 6y ago
        It is a smaller camp but it is not a statistical outlier. It is a very repeatable and predictable outcome.