Same here. I'll have to guess at an insightful comment. Here goes

Sure Europeans get paid less - but they also get a bunch of great benefits like time off and government paid health care, so it works out

Also, the average salary in America is skewed by FANMAG paying really high salaries

In the end, I'm happy with my work and paid fairly. I deserve a 10% raise, but I'm not pressured to switch right now

HN of the future, how did I do?

>Sure Europeans get paid less - but they also get a bunch of great benefits like time off and government paid health care, so it works out

At $45,284 the US has the highest household net disposable income per capita in the OECD (<http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/united-states/>), where "disposable income" (<http://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=46>" accounts for healthcare and government benefits.

my two cents as someone that worked in Europe and the US:

> time off

I get 21 days in the US, but any holiday that falls on a weekend I am guaranteed to get on a weekday.

Ultimately it ends up somewhere around 30 paid days off I would guess. Back in Germany, if a holiday fell on a weekend, I just lost it.

> government paid health care

In Germany I had to pay 7.5 percent of my salary + my employer had to match that. When I was freelancing I had to do the full 15%.

The US clearly has the worse healthcare system overall, but I pay a LOT less for MUCH better service. That is however just because of my employer and on a population level it's a catastrophe.

That being said, my impression is also very skewed by FANMAG and the average experience is probably worse.

There's an upper limit for the health contributions though. Software freelancer in Germany ends up paying about 900€/month if they're publicly insured.

> government paid health care, so it works out

This argument always gets brought up. The thing is, even in much of the Europe, highly paid professionals don't use the government paid health care, but instead get health insurances from their employers, so the situation is the same as in the US. For some reason those health insurances seem to be much cheaper here than in the US, though.

In France (and probably in other European countries), private health insurances from employers are complementary to the government health care and don't replace it. That's why it is much cheaper. And so even highly paid professionals still use the government paid health care. Moreover, if it wasn't the case it would make the national health care system a lot less efficient.

At least in Poland, the private health insure won’t cover serious procedures, eg they will cover cardiologists, but not a hospital stay, operations, etc. this means they are much cheaper because they don’t have this tail end, high value risk. You still rely on the national insurance and health care system for that.

What countries is this true.

I know zero people who have private health insurance. Some companies offer it as a perk, but I have never heard of anyone paying for their own private health insurance.

Ireland. Without private health insurance you would be waiting many years before you would get to see a consultant in the public system. To even get an appointment in a public hospital in a reasonable amount of time you need private health insurance.

Americans make several multiples what europeans do in this market. Healthcare is expensive, but it's less than 20k/year. The salary differences are frequently >100k/year.

You can also negotiate PTO. Passive-aggressive "unlimited" (but not really) PTO is becoming a common bullet point in startup JDs now.

> Healthcare is expensive, but it's less than 20k/year.

That's not true. I pay about $10,000 a year for healthcare and my company pays roughly another $20,000. And that's before I have pay per visit up to my rather high deductible. And I work for a large company with good benefits. Healthcare costs in the U.S. are insane and almost hard to fathom if you haven't lived through them yourself.

>I pay about $10,000 a year for healthcare and my company pays roughly another $20,000

Oh wow. What are your circumstances where these costs make sense? Did you/your wife give birth, and someonwin your family have surgery? Are there special circumstances that would jack up the bill?

$30k for a family is REALLY high for almost any situation.

Your benefits aren’t that great. I was paying $200 per month premium for my entire family ($2400 per year). $1000 deductible, 90% coverage, max of $2,000 individual or $5,000 for the entire family.

So maximum in any year was $7,000. And unless we had a birth or major surgery it was typically much less.

They're not great, that's true. My point is that they're not unusual in the U.S.

Ok, even then: 30k < 100k. You still come out 70k ahead employed by a US company.

How is health coverage for FAANG level and other large tech companies in the USA? That has always been a concern of mine moving to the USA.

It wasn’t for a FAANG, but one company I interviewed for in the USA wasn’t going to give me health coverage for 6 months.

I work for a large tech company. I'm paying about $16k a year after monthly premiums and annual deductibles for a family of 3. (All but $6500 of that is pre-tax).

It's not at all uncommon for companies, even small ones, to pay 100% for the employee. Paying for spouses and children is much less common.

Most companies offer pretty good health insurance immediately.

Usually there are options like Kaiser in CA that are all inclusive similar to what you’d see in Europe. Some offer cheaper options. Some offer options that include health savings contributions from the employer to offset high deductibles.

How do these plans work when you lose your ability to work, like in an accident or longer sickness? Do companies keep you employed? Do you still get to keep the health insurance for a time after this?

I work for Twitter and the health coverage is quite good. Max annual out of pocket is $2000 and mental health is covered 90% from the first dollar.

I pay $1000/year for my policy.

> government paid health care,

Most salary comparisons are done pre-taxes. Europe has much higher taxes, in part to pay for that free education and healthcare.

> Europe has much higher taxes, in part to pay for that free education and healthcare.

That part about higher taxes paying for "free" education and healthcare had me cracking up.

Two other things: tax is way higher in (western) Europe, and I would guess (site still down) the pay disparity will be something like 2x.

> I'm happy with my work and paid fairly

But are you American or European? :)