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Right, but I wasn't making bay area salaries, I was making Irish salaries at first, then a split between Irish and US when I was working remote. This means €65k

Right, but I wasn't making bay area salaries, I was making Irish salaries at first, then a split between Irish and US when I was working remote. This means €65k instead of $165k. On top of that, I had one lucky break (Okta bought Auth0) and while the stock was nice, it was all taxed at 52%. The upshot of all this is that over the course of ten years I would almost certainly have made a couple million more (especially if I had invested decently or bought a house) than I did in Ireland, and while I like living in Europe (though not Ireland, I couldn't wait to leave by the end), being able to FIRE by 40 would have been better.

syrgian 2y ago
2013 was a quite bad moment to move into Ireland. It was very hard hit by the crisis. Right now salaries are way better: https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater-dublin-area https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater... I moved in 2020 and it has been the best decision I could have made. Taking into account everything (savings rate, safety, working hours, job security, politics, closeness to my home country in Europe) it is the best place I could be by far. All other places trade off too much in exchange of something else. For example, I would have better savings rate in California (maybe 60-100k instead of 30-50k a year), but it would be worse in every other metric, except perhaps weather, although I dislike hot weather.