It depends very much on life stage. I make about 2/3 of these figures in Amsterdam now, and have declined recent opportunities to move to the Bay Area. If I were single and 10 years younger, I would have jumped at the chance. But now at 40 with two young kids in nice schools, a comfy house with a 15 minute commute and a partner with a good income, it takes a lot more to make me move.

I moved from CA to Europe. Don't regret it. I get a month and a half of vacation, a nice walkable city, and don't feel like I live in a dying democracy.

Two days ago my infant was sick. Made one phone call and thirty minutes later a qualified gp showed up at my apartment and made sure everything was fine. At 2 AM. For free.

In the US I could make more money but would spend it all on rent and cars (and private school tuition in a few years), and my time on commuting and explaining to colleagues that I never check email on vacation. Ever.

I'll keep what I've got. Also, lower eu salaries should make it easier to start a business if the mood strikes.

Nothing in life is "free". Europeans pay way higher taxes than Americans.

"would spend it all on rent and cars" Excuses. If you don't want to make it work that's fine. But there are tens of thousands of people making it work in the Bay Area.

#1 Don't have a car and live in SF, or buy a used cheap Honda or Toyota.

#2 Look at Rooms on craigslist, you can easily find a room or in-law room w/ own private bathroom IN San Francisco for under $1600/mo.

All this for a <30min commute to your tech company of choice in SF.

The media and everyone else likes to talk about how expensive it is to live in SF saying it costs $4k/mo for a 1bed room apartment...except these people are cherrypicking the most expensive and nicest places to live in SF. You can easily find cheaper on craigslist.

Excuses??? Excuses are for when you've done something wrong. Why the hostility? I decided to give europe a try and liked it, so I stayed. sheesh.

Anyway I had a good time in the bay, in Berkeley. But at this stage in my life I like it here.

Also, even though I could have gotten "unlimited" time off in the US (note the huge scare quotes), my wife couldn't have, and here she gets ample holidays too.

Healthcare in the US is twice as expensive and outcome significantly worse.

Do you not have your tech company paying your health insurance?

Outcome is significantly worse? Then why do world leaders and rich people from other countries visit the U.S. just for healthcare?

I don't hear people from Google/FB complaining about healthcare costs..

I'm not who you were responding to, but I like knowing that the poorest person in the country still gets decent care.

> Europeans pay way higher taxes than Americans

Plain false.

Do you mind me asking the hit your salary took? Do you also mine asking what region of Europe, and how you were able to find the right employer?

It's hard to say. I came to europe as a technical account manager and transitioned to data engineer here (lately, shoving stuff around with redis/celery and reporting on it with redshift and superset). I doubled my income after six months here, but that was due to a new job. I'm around the 90th percentile for incomes of full time workers in my country (Ireland).

My best guess is I'd make around 50k more (usd) in the bay. Hard to say though.

I came here on a working holiday visa; check the website of your country's Irish embassy for more info. I got a bit lucky in that my old company had an office here (though I came under my own steam) but honestly got my best gig through a guy I met in a pub after overhearing a discussion about the pronunciation of JSON. That was in 2013 with a crap economy; now it's much easier. Hell, if you're decent with python (bonus if you've experience with Celery) drop me a line. Look in my profile.

I dont think anyone who has a well rounded view on life thinks that the main import of your time here on earth is how large your salary is.

Then again, if you are living in SF on your own volution, I bet there are a lot of things that you have convinced yourself are normal, to feel that you are part of the crowd there - and of course know that salary is the most important thing there is in life!

It depends on what you'd like to do with your life.

I'm originally from a small European island and I'm making a reasonable amount working in a city. I'm really missing the significantly lower stress, fewer and more friendly people, lack of traffic, different kinds of (political or otherwise) discussions, etcetera. I have friends who have sacrificed a large percentage of their salary to return to a "happier" life in that aspect.

You can choose which type of "unit" you want to have more value in your life.

I think we (Europeans) generally argue that paying taxes and universal healthcare is great not that earning less is. Also while some professions pay less others pay more (like working in a grocery store) so it’s not that clear cut.

That's a pretty broad statement about Europe. The majority of Europe is poor compared to Sweden or Germany.

If you're making ~$60,000 or more in the US, you are overwhelmingly going to have good health insurance. If you're making $140,000, you're going to have great health insurance. I fail to see how universal healthcare is a lure in this case.

The US has a far more progressive income tax system than most of the developed European nations (Scandinavian nations for example have a highly regressive income tax system compared to the US [1]). In the US the rich pay nearly all income taxes (the top 25% pay ~90% of all income taxes). If you're poor in the US you get free healthcare.

Grocery stores in Europe do not pay better than in the US. The majority of Europe has a median income that doesn't reach the US average minimum wage (state blended). A cashier in Germany makes a similar wage as a cashier in the US (the median in the US is around $21k). The US has considerably higher wages than all nations in Europe except for four (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland). The EU's median income is 60% that of the US. So if you're going to compare, it doesn't make sense to ever say "Europe" - you can't reasonably compare Russia, Poland or Spain to the US on income. It's about as useful as saying "Asia" in an income comparison.

[1] https://taxfoundation.org/how-scandinavian-countries-pay-the...

> The majority of Europe is poor compared to Sweden or Germany.

There are some poor countries like Bulgaria and Romania. Most of Europe is doing just fine. Like you have poor Europe you also have poor US cities and countries and if you compare the poor parts you will find them not all too different.

> If you're making ~$60,000 or more in the US, you are overwhelmingly going to have good health insurance. If you're making $140,000, you're going to have great health insurance. I fail to see how universal healthcare is a lure in this case.

Even if you have great insurance the knowledge that whatever happens to you, you are fine is an amazing feeling. Also knowing that everybody (with exceptions like people who are there illegally and not entitled to healthcare) having coverage adds to your personal quality of life tremendously.

> The US has a far more progressive income tax system than most of the developed European nations

It’s not about how progressive the system is but how much you pay and get for it. In the US you need disposable income to get qualitatively high services and most of those are individual things. Eg: public transit and things like that are hard to get and underfunded.

> Grocery stores in Europe do not pay better than in the US.

A grocery store worker in central Europe earning minimum wage or equivalent gets social security, child support, maternity leave of a year, a guaranteed job after returning and a dystem that supports their children and partner. It’s not the money that matters but what you get.

In Austria for instance someone working in a grocery store has a minimum wage of 21000 eur a year minimum, guaranteed increases every year. A 38 euro work week with guaranteed overtime pay, a guaranteed weekend (and at least every secon saturday off), one year of maternity/paternity money and time off, 5 weeks of holiday, two months of notice, unemployment insurance, guaranteed salaries in case of bancruptcy and much more.

For balance: in Ukraine, a population approximately five times larger than Austria - a grocery store worker would be considered lucky to make 4000 EUR per year.

Further - for tens (hundreds?) of millions of people in Europe, in countries such as Hungary, Serbia, Poland, Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Moldova, Russia, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia - even parts of Greece and Italy - earning 21000 EUR per year is an unobtainable dream for working in a grocery store.

The numbers within the EU and EEA are PPP adjusted not that badly off. Ukraine is an extreme example where part of ones salary often bypasses the state and taxation so is Greece which has a dysfunctional government and evonomic slump. With extremes like that you might as well compare it with Detroit or if we don’t stick to the EU might as well compare with Mexico.

Detroit (Michigan State) - average monthly wage 2016, 3,210 EUR per month (source: bls.gov)

EU/EEA countries, selected average monthly wages:

Portugal : 1158 EUR Estonia : 1201 EUR Latvia : 925 EUR Lithuania : 851 EUR Poland : 1102 EUR Czech Republic : 1149 EUR Slovakia : 980 EUR Hungary : 955 EUR Romania : 787 EUR Croatia : 1081 EUR Bulgaria : 586 EUR Greece : 1092 EUR

(source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...)

Summary - Detroit/Michigan wages are three to five times higher than all of the above EU/EEA countries.

No figures are PPP adjusted (but clearly there is a very large gap between Detroit/Austrian-grocery-store-wages compared to much of the EU/EEA).

If we don't want to stick to the EU (btw, you originally referred to "Europe"), using the examples proffered so far:

Mexico 664 EUR per month vs Ukraine 264 EUR per month

As I tried to explain above the wages alone do not matter. Detroit is a dysfunctional city with severe lack of basic services. I strongly doubt any EU citizen no matter how disadvantaged would see an improvement by a hypothetical move to Detroit.

Mexico and Ukraine I cannot comment because I know little about it.

20 years of experience in development , 5year degree from computer engineering school, with Mba and PhD. Net 13000 eur per year. Greece

> If you're making ~$60,000 or more in the US, you are overwhelmingly going to have good health insurance. If you're making $140,000, you're going to have great health insurance. I fail to see how universal healthcare is a lure in this case.

If you get insured.

I think most Europeans are proud to pay taxes to make sure a random fellow living down the street who got cancer can afford his treatments. At least that has been my mentality around taxes for as long as I've lived there.

Sure, taxes don't all go towards nice things :) but at the end of the day I'm proud to be helpful to those who are in need.

Never understood the healthcare system in the US, it just sounds "wrong" to me.

The US has a socialized system of healthcare. It's indirect in the sense that if you can't pay you get covered anyways and the hospital takes a loss.

If you're low income you get Medicaid, if you're old you get Medicare.

People with cancer who get no treatment at all in the US is very rare and usually something else is happening behind the scenes.

This has Many notable exceptions.

Due to the housing meltdown, many people have underwater realty of negative value, yet this asset disqualifies many low cost programs.

The asset limits are very low on Medicaid ($2k individual, $3k couple)

Even medicare is quite low ($7.5k, $11.5k). To qualify, you must effectively divest all your assets and it becomes an insurance bet with the state that you'll die quickly. (@ $7k/month for a nursing home, its not a very good bet)

If you can't pay hospitals and nursing homes kick you out, just happened to a friend. Medicare wouldn't pay for more than two months of care -> on the street.

For most people, the value of selling their house (say $100k, would pay for only 1 year of senior care in the US)

Even better, the care is often lackluster for the cost. (Admittedly at $7k/month I would be expecting marble floors and gold faucets)

Medicare has no income limits. It's available to all over 65, as lots ng as you've paid in.

You are correct. I was mistakenly quoting the Medicare Savings Program. Cannot edit so posting this to reflect.

"If you're making $140,000, you're going to have great health insurance."

I am and I'm not. This depends on your employer. Otherwise, one can spend tens of thousands on health insurance to maintain coverage. And it could be terminated by an act of Congress at any time. Worker's compensation is also a thing. Try waiting 8 months to see a doctor for repetitive stress injuries because you've changed states and no one wants to take your case.

Well, you get good healthcare and pension in most european countries. You can live a lot cheaper than in the big cities in the us and there is no gangs and not as many drug addicts

Compare housing costs in London, Paris etc vs SV - yes health care Is nice but that is used as an excuse by employers who also benefit from the European health systems.

Or maybe they simply have 0 interest living in a place where the majority of inhabitants are young male tech workers.

I can't think of anything more dull. Salary offer would.need to be much more than the bay currently pays before I'd even consider it.

Your premise is incorrect on two counts.

San Francisco is 51/49, male/female. Not a particularly high imbalance at all.

The median age is 38, which is older than the median age in all of California.

The majority of inhabitants in SF, are in fact not young male tech workers.

sources?

I’m not so sure, SF is nice but it’s not particularly special if you take away the high salaries and great tech connections.

Agreed. And the "perfect weather" is also debatable. I was there twice, in August and in December. Both times it was too cold.

I wouldn't want to move there, but I'd love to stay for a month or two. Too bad that's not possible for me yet (neither rich nor able to work while staying in the US).

Maybe this global work permit thing that the UN supposedly looked into a while ago actually does happen one day...