This article has caused a lot of consternation in one of the international forums I follow with a lot of younger people getting started in their EU tech careers because they can’t figure out why they’re unable to find compensation coming close to this anywhere.
You do get a total comp that is 2-3x local market if you manage to get into FAANG like companies and even the tier below. I think this is what Gergely is describing.
That is still life changing for a lot of engineers, and worth the 3 month grind to get through the interviews. At least it was for me, and this article was a big part of why I made the jump.
If you pair it with working via your own limited company and get your taxes down to single digits or low double digits you can make as much as salaried people on 300k - and with no equity that can go up or down (sure, and no holidays or sick days if you're the kind of person that does those).
Yet, even when you hit 200+k in EU, you're still left thinking you could be making 600k in SV.
the kind of person that does those? you mean humans?
This was true through my entire career and even back in high school. I think usage of sick days is likely to follow a learned behavior from parents/siblings growing up.
I dunno, my mom taught me that if I’m only really sick if I spend the day in bed (in preference to anything else I could be doing).
I think it’s a fair definition.
But they contain a large equity portion. And over 2-3 years that equity portion ends up being more than the base salary, and you can get pretty close to a Bay Area compensation range.
e.g. I was L4 @ Google Waterloo in Canada. Base compensation was nothing special. Good for the immediate area, but not stellar. Yes, nice perks, amazing benefits, decent vacation, good bonus, etc. But after accruing RSUs for a few years you're probably making double what you started with. Especially so if the stock goes up a bunch.
Could you make more money working directly for Google in SV? Certainly, but your cost of living would be way higher. But even if you stay home you're likely making at least twice what your peers in the regular local companies are making.
Unfortunately it's terrible golden handcuffs, because nobody else in the region will be able to match that compensation package.
But of course there's also the chance that not only will Google's stock go down, but their revenues... and generosity... will to.
Me, I "lucked out" and sold my RSU at the peak. Though I've been living off the cash proceeds since, so.
Like intimate cleaning and nursing of old and very sick people under immense time pressure and emotional stress.
Oh, well ... never mind
It's just price capping leading to scarcity.
I don't think Germany has at-will employment. Plus all the taxes to feed people who don't want to work.
That’s a very bad representation of the German reality of long term unemployment caused by the lack of availability of jobs.
The majority of welfare recipients in Germany are working people who are underpaid and/or underemployed.
What your taxes are really paying for is keeping the economic system with the largest low-wage sector in Europe going.
Think about that before yapping about „people who don’t want to work“.
Well, if you get hired by FAANG in Germany, you don't get the SF salary. My experience is that companies that do offer extreme salaries do not do so out of competition with FAANG (since FAANG does not compete with itself globally, i.e. FAANG companies tell you something like "if you want SF salary, come and work in SF," which tends to be difficult due to the exploitative nature of US immigration system).
Rather, there's some kind of a catch, like "we need you to know this highly specialized thing that globally only a handful of people have experience with" (I'm looking at you, AI solvers), or they provide conditions very few people can tolerate.