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No, the extra 50-200% is in addition to the employer-provided healthcare benefits and retirement match. If you get seriously sick, you're much more likely to g
by kcorbitt 5y ago
No, the extra 50-200% is in addition to the employer-provided healthcare benefits and retirement match.
If you get seriously sick, you're much more likely to get effective and timely treatment with the gold-plated health insurance plans provided by US tech employers than the options I'm familiar with in Europe.*
I'll 100% grant that the US healthcare system is really messed up, and if you're not in a highly-compensated field you're probably better off in most European systems. I'm socially liberal and would much rather the US system were more equitable, even if that means my own personal experience gets a bit worse. But that doesn't change the fact that if you're an in-demand engineer your personal interactions with the US system will be great.
* To be fair, I've only lived in London and Barcelona, so there may be other parts of Europe with better healthcare systems. But at least compared to those two cities, I've had much better experiences with my employer-provided health coverage in the US than in the public UK or private Spanish healthcare systems I've used.
- iso1631 5y agoWhy didn't you choose to have private healthcare in the UK? It costs peanuts and I'm surprised big tech companies don't offer it as standard
- kcorbitt 5y agoI was working on a startup at the time wasn't making any money. And to be fair, if you have no money the NHS is pretty awesome!
- iso1631 5y agoDo startups in the US provide healthcare plans?
- kcorbitt 5y agoA funded startup will generally provide health insurance of some kind, although at the very earliest stages it's probably not great. As startups get larger and less cash-poor overall comp (including health insurance) increases significantly. In my specific case though I was bootstrapping my own startup, which had no funding, revenue, or employees. (I survived by living off my wife's PhD stipend at the time.)
- iso1631 5y agoSo in the UK you had health insurance and chose not to pay the extra £800 a year to get gold plated private stuff In the US you wouldn't have had any health insurance at all? Have you compared health insurance at a FAANG in the US with NHS + Bupa in the UK?