> There are plenty of smart people and high tech companies in Europe though, Its like comparing a top German tech university with MIT, Stanford, or Berkeley.

> There are plenty of smart people and high tech companies in Europe though, Its like comparing a top German tech university with MIT, Stanford, or Berkeley. Sure the German tech universities are really good, but from the set of people I know with offers from MIT or Stanford, none of them rejected them, because they were a huge boon for their careers. The impact is pretty much the same with tech in SV. > so there's no reason to take the job insecurity and parental leave hit for that alone. Parental leave is usually _orders of magnitude better_ in SV than Germany. All SV employers I know offer you 4-6 months of fully-paid parental leave, and allow you to take more months, but unpaid. If your salary is 600k$, your paid parental leave is ~300k$. In Germany you get max 1800 EUR netto / month of Elterngeld. If you take it for 14 months, that's 25000 EUR. Somebody making 5000 EUR netto/month (e.g. 120k$ brutto), and deciding to stay at home, looses 3200 EUR netto per month. Most of the people I know making slightly over 100k$ in Germany with kids went back to work as soon as possible (women in less than 3 months... which is nuts), because they have bills to foot (mortage, etc.).