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People don't move if their lives are decent enough. If FAANG sets up shop in Milan and pays 80k compared to the local average of 40k, few people would rather m
by oblio 2y ago
People don't move if their lives are decent enough.
If FAANG sets up shop in Milan and pays 80k compared to the local average of 40k, few people would rather move to Zurich for 150k and have to learn Swiss German and have worse weather and few local friends.
For comparison, Eastern Europe has FAANG offices and people working there generally don't move as much, and the few that do leave, generally go to Switzerland (ok) or the US.
But those are the ultra ambitious, maybe 10-20%, and they generally leave because Eastern Europe has a lot of other structural problems that aren't really there in say, Spain, for example Eastern Europe has pretty bad healthcare in general, infrastructure is much worse than in Spain, general quality of life is also worse than in Spain.
- jonas21 2y agoThe people who are ambitious and driven enough to move for better opportunities are probably the ones they want to hire.
- throwaway2037 2y ago> If FAANG sets up shop in Milan and pays 80k compared to the local average of 40k I see this types of claims on HN frequently. This looks "too easy". Why isn't Big Tech setting up offices in large southern European cities to do exactly this?
- oblio 2y agoI don't know, that's why I'm asking. My guess would be that they didn't get tax incentives or other behind the scenes things that we rarely find out about.
- disgruntledphd2 2y agoYeah, I'd say it's mostly tax reasons. Generally, if you have a substantial presence somewhere, you become liable for a bunch of taxation stuff. That being said, it's probably also non-English as a first language. Note that the vast majority of tech in Europe is either in Ireland (tax reasons) or London (city known to Americans), both of which are English speaking. Switzerland is interesting, in that it's not English speaking. I know that FB generally just set up Eng offices wherever Google did, so the real question is why Google set up there.