35k in a city with a ~40% tax rate and rents approaching 2k/month.

Developer salaries in Europe are a joke.

There are a lot of really low-ball offers, but there is also a shortage of talented applicants, so you can find some stuff around for €140K or €85-110 / hour.

You also don't need a car, work reasonable hours and get twice the vacation.

Actually though. This is awful. I loved Amsterdam, but I can't imagine why anyone would stay in Europe when even new grads can make >= 4x that in the US.

35k is low even for straight out of university. With a few years of experience it’s closer to 50-70k€ (57-80k$)

That said, when I was doing the math on moving to the states, a +80% increase in salary still left me with less money in NYC vs Amsterdam. (I have kids: healthcare + kids education + rent basically wipes out your income in the US, it doesn’t in Amsterdam)

Yup, and when your kids will go to uni you'll be paying 2.000 euro/year for TU Delft instead of 40.000 for MIT.

Well one of the reasons (and it's a dumb one), is that getting a US work Visa is almost impossible for most, so they don't really have a choice, unfortunately.

Problem is it's impossible to get a US work visa :)

That is not a regular salary in the Netherlands, they are just being cheap. My first job paid 40k, in a cheaper city, 10 years ago without a university degree.

Tax brackets are progressive, with 35k you pay about 20% income tax. Expats get a 30% income tax discount for 5 years.

While salaries are low, it does have some advantages to live here. Strong employee protection (you can't get fired for example), paid leave (minimum is 20 days + public holidays), you don't work more than 40h/week, cheap healthcare, good infrastructure and public transport, paid sick/disability, unemployment benefit, welfare, state pension, etc.

It is hard to compare employment salaries. I think it makes more sense to compare freelance wages as they don't have those benefits. Freelance engineers make about 80~100 euro/hour and get some tax discount.

I paid 32% on 36k (my first job as a junior dev). But I had no ruling because I studied there for 6 months.

Agree with everything else. Netherlands is a great country.

I think you are mixing up the tax bracket with the total income tax you payed. With 36k you should pay approximately 25%. See https://www.berekenhet.nl/inkomen/belasting-box1-verschil.ht...