Wtf? So if you and your partner get a top 1% tech job in the US you can out earn an average job in Europe. No shit!

The math is more like: top 10% of tech jobs in the US would make ~3-4x of top 10% of Europe. And there are so many tech jobs in the US that this top 10% is much larger in number than anywhere else. There's a reason people emigrate to the US from everywhere despite pretty harsh work environment and social security nets.

For example, a Google IC5/6 in Paris would make between 150k-200k vs ~500-700k in the bay area.

And the bay area apartment would cost $8k/MO for a 3br/2 bath to raise a single kid in.

Yes, it does.

You are likely not going to be renting an apartment with that kind of money, you are just making your landlord rich.

Instead, you put a 200k deposit, pay the same 8k per month as mortgage (approx 1/3rd of your salary is the rule of thumb), and sell the house or apartment after a while. That way, you are not losing any money.

Check https://www.nerdwallet.com/mortgages/mortgage-calculator for confirming these numbers.

… unless the price of properties goes … down

If it goes to zero, it is almost equivalent to have payed rent for 30 years! ;)

If it becomes half, you still have a home to live in rent free.

More likely it doubles every 10-15 years.

The bay area is expensive, but not that expensive. 4-6k/mo in rent will get you a 3-4br in all but the most expensive neighborhoods. You could also rent a house for that much in many nice bay area suburbs.

That’s 150-200k on the earning side. In most European countries this has a bunch of social security pay-in, pension pay-in, employer-side employee tax etc. already paid for via the employer. The “real” wage is often close to double, so 300k-400k vs 500k-700k, which doesn’t sound nearly as grim once you factor in the much better quality of life.

A pension is not worth 150k-200k a year in compensation. Also taxes are higher in most of Europe, even taking payroll taxes into account (I assume that's what you mean by social security pay in).

Very much this. Folks tend to compare absolute numbers at the top of their payslip while forgetting all the rest. You don’t get good roads and healthcare out of nothing.

Yes, you can make the math work for you by factoring in subjective criteria like quality of life.

> on the earning side

I'm not sure if you are aware but some of the things you mention are also provided by good employers in the US, but they are not obligated to.

> For example, a Google IC5/6 in Paris would make between 150k-200k vs ~500-700k in the bay area.

Having worked for Big Tech(TM) in Ireland, I'm a _little_ sceptical of those numbers. There's a big gap, but, at least in the mid levels, it is not _that_ big.

Levels.fyi seems to have paywalled most of their data, so I can't find what Google pay in Paris, but the lowest they show for total compensation for an L6 is $390k, highest $720k. Both of those are serious outliers; median is $550k. While I'm always a bit suspicious of levels.fyi data, I think you're seriously exaggerating how big the gap is, at least in big tech (it can be a lot bigger in small startups).

Your math is based on you and your partner making 400k-500k/yr lol.

Yes, that's what we make right now on average.

If you work in tech for a few years that's kind of average. We are having a new PhD grad join next month with a 400k TC offer.

If you have trouble believing me, check out levels.fyi for (Facebook:E5, Google:L5-6, Nvidia:IC5, Apple ICT5).

>Yes, that's what we make right now on average.

>If you work in tech for a few years that's kind of average.

You should probably learn what "average" means if you're getting paid that much to develop software.

The first average is between two people over a few years.

The second average is for similar tech jobs.

But good job resorting to ad hominem.

I’ll buy that 400-500k a year is average for Facebook, Apple, Google, etc.

It’s absolutely NOT average for companies who aren’t the massive giants that those are. I’ve been in actual tech startups, not Uber for Clowns, and the best salary I’ve seen was an (admittedly very good) $170k for a senior dev position. That’s close to average when I talk to my friends and associates in tech in the valley and beyond.

The etc in your first sentence is doing a bit of heavy lifting here. There are so many companies in that category now that if you have any specialized software skill (compilers, ML, database engines, OS, systems in general) you can absolutely make that much if you wanted to. If you don't believe me, and have such skills, spend 20-30 days interviewing!

Sure if you are a typical full stack developer you are not going to make that much money unless you get into Google or something.

Also, base salaries are typically not that high, but the total compensation with equity can reach that pretty easily.

I guess in the energy tech industry no one pays that because I’ve been looking, and I have pretty specialized skills.

Makes sense, it's interesting to see this discrepancy between fields.

Could you elaborate what specialized skills though?

I write software systems to control devices in buildings in the context of energy savings, like hvac and charging cars, and also control attached distributed energy resources, like batteries or solar.

A friend started working in this space last year. It seems like the usual story here is smaller companies giving you lottery tickets in the form of pre-IPO options. And large established companies paying a bit below market rates.

See when people say "tech" colloquially it means website and app developers, not us embedded dev hobos.

Eh, embedded and sensor-fusion devs are making bank working at Waymo, or VR at Apple or Meta. It's less about the field itself and more about big-tech salary-leveling (and insane profits)

Facebook, Apple and Google are very big companies which hire a lot of very well paid engineers. We're not talking about being an NFL quarterback or something where only a small handful of people will reach that level. Being a big tech engineer is probably the easiest and most achievable path to $500k/year on the planet.

Quite

https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=ac7c7bbe4f75d28c -- Staff software engineer 160-200k.

https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=4a0886dfc2bbf783 -- 100-150k with need for top-secret clearance

Then in Bay area specifically

https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=2629520bf28dce4d -- Senior staff 175-360k

https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=9822ada0313c9665 -- 150-300k for staff engineer in ML

https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=088b23b29fd809a7 -- Senior 185k

400-500k is way over average for the Bay Area, let alone anywhere else

The range posted is usually just the base pay. For most public companies the total compensation would be ~60-80% more because of the stock. For senior positions, this would sometimes be 2x.

I would have put it differently, but your use of “average” made me wonder what you were thinking as well. I’m still not quite sure. You’re not a hypothetical person whose salary and job prospects are unknown to… you. If you’ve received job offers locally and overseas that would be interesting, but what you’re talking about sounds like speculation.

>If you’ve received job offers locally and overseas that would be interesting, but what you’re talking about sounds like speculation.

Yes, I had considered moving to Europe after completing my Phd. The offers were about 1/3rd of US, with a significantly lower potential for growing beyond a few tens of percentages over 5-10 years.

Yeah, that's a pretty massive difference.

If you say something ridiculous and get gently called on it, it does not mean ad hominem.

Ok so you’re in a hot sub-field. Your experience is not typical even at the companies you’ve named. And it’s definitely not typical “after a few years”, unless it’s a new PhD in hot field * top tier company * multiple good reviews. And you’re probably extrapolating the anomalously good stock performance that frankly you have no control over.

Your average Leetcode drone that makes it into those companies is making $300k after 5 years.

>Ok so you’re in a hot sub-field.

Compilers. Not hot, but a bit niche so it sometimes pays well. Not any more than ML or distributed systems specialists.

>Your experience is not typical even at the companies you’ve named

You can check levels.fyi for averages, don't have to rely on my word.

>Your average Leetcode drone that makes it into those companies is making $300k after 5 years.

You are right. So, now the question is: given you are not an 'average leetcode drone' do you work in the US or Europe. I hope this clarifies why competent European computer scientists and engineers move to the US in large numbers.

Let me share my math.

Let's just take one perk I get to enjoy right now: I can afford to live in a high density city block with a long-term average yearly homicide rate below 4 per 100000 inhabitants.

In the U.S. I could replicate this only by purchasing a city block sized campus for myself and then investing in very very good screening of tenants and a private security force.

Based on average salaries of police and municipal infrastructure workers, combined with real estate prices in major U.S. metros, even with a bit of optimization, I couldn't get the cost to go below $2,150,023,240 for the first year (including real estate purchases) and about $1b yearly afterwards. I could maybe go lower by building my own city block somewhere outside a major metro, but I think infrastructure costs would eat that up.

And that's just one perk I got to enjoy: others, such as living within walking distance to my workplace, would be even harder to replicate. Yet others, like the ability to visit a borthel without having to worry about losing my job or going to jail, are nigh impossible.

Sure, there's additional efficiency where one action can help achieve multiple such perks, so let's assume I could replicate the lifestyle I enjoyed for a measlt $1b pa. That's about 8000x the annual income I had when I retired. And US salaries are not even 10x higher than Australian ones, so as far as I can tell, the math is not even close to working out.

(Of course, not everybody cares about these specific perks, and for some the U.S. may be a better fit. They're welcome to emigrate: the ones who don't appear to care enough to vote and keep these policies in place every 3 years, so I doubt anybody's getting the short end of the stick. The point is that it's stupid to compare salary numbers, because a lot of the things people want are trivial conveniences here and still unaffordable for even the richest people in other places, and vice versa.)

> achieving a homicide rate below 4/100k would require building a secure compound and hiring live security

This is a little silly. There are many US cities that meet that standard. Seattle's rate is 6/100k which sounds reasonably safe to me. I've never known anyone (and none of my friends knows anyone) who has died by intentional homicide. It's simply not something that we worry about.

> living within walking distance to work is hard to replicate

Why would this be the case? Major cities have both large tech offices and dense housing. My office has many apartments, townhomes, and single-family homes within walking distance. The neighborhood it's located in is quite livable.

> visiting a brothel without losing my job is impossible

This one is probably true. If regular brothel access is a priority, then the US is probably not a good choice. Nevada might be an exception.

> I've never known anyone (and none of my friends knows anyone) who has died by intentional homicide. It's simply not something that we worry about.

I do know people who were hit by a car while crossing residential streets.

I don't know any people who were hit by a car while crossing a highway.

This doesn't mean highways are safer to cross on foot than residential streets.

Similarly, the people who are not murder victims in US cities must change their natural behavior in thousands of costly and humiliating ways so as to not become victims, and all that effort still doesn't keep the murder rate lower than the 30-60s that US downtowns have. Do you mind your own business while a teenager walks out of the grocery store without paying? Congratulations, you won't show up in those homicide stats. But it's not merely the stats that were the problem: it's the amount of social disfunction that it indicates and you won't buy your way out of that by any realistic higher salary.

Similarly, I don't personally know anybody who died of lung cancer, but would also not be keen to wear a respirator so that I can safely eat in a restaurant where people smoke.

> There are many US cities that meet that standard.

Oh, I'm sure there are many such _cities_. But that's not the rate of my city, it's the rate of the high density business district I live in. The city itself has a still lower homicide rate, but it's not relevant. I can't find data about the homicide rate of high-density living downtown areas of Seattle, but I doubt it's lower than that of the city itself.

> living within walking distance to work is hard to replicate

Because then you have to make your city block purchase in the immediate vicinity of your employer's office, which will further increase costs since you won't be able to choose among the cheapest high density city blocks.

I don’t have access to statistics for specific neighborhoods either, but I’m willing to believe Australia is safer in that respect. Singapore’s rates are so low that they make Australia and the US both look unacceptably dangerous. Perception is relative.

I’m not aware of any humiliating ways that I change my behavior to avoid being murdered, although perhaps if you observed me for a few days you would notice some.

I have never looked into buying an entire city block so can’t comment on that. I’ve been content with a single home so far.

To be clear, I am not looking into buying an entire city block: I am glad I can afford to live the lifestyle I want without having to. This wouldn't be available in the US, which is why the math didn't work out and I didn't move there given the opportunity. And I get salty when people like GP insist that this implies faulty math skills. I'm glad others who have different preferences can live elsewhere and do their own thing, though, especially if I am separated from them by land and water.

Re murder rates: I can't find data for Seattle, but based on data I could find (San José below, LA) I'd expect the rate to be about 10x higher for downtown high-density areas than for the whole city. Which is pretty bad.

Hello, I am an American who has never been murdered. I am curious to learn more about the humiliating ways I have unknowingly modified my behavior to avoid a violent death. Can you be more specific?

Sure, let's be more specific. First of all, do you live in a high density area with a high homicide rate?

If so, answer the following questions.

- Have you ever seen somebody walk out of a convenience store without paying. If so, would you try to say anything disapproving to such a person?

- If you're a woman, have you ever taken an Uber instead of the bus service your taxes subsidize because of safety concerns? If not, has this happened to a partner or friend? Would you let your underage daughter take the bus home from somewhere alone after dark?

- Have you ever had to cross the road because you weren't comfortable walking past somebody standing/lying on the corner?

- It's 3am. A large group of teenagers are having a party in your apartment building. They're still at it and they're very loud. Are you comfortable heading over and asking them to keep it down?

- It's 6pm. A large group of teenagers are hanging out in a public park near your place. You are curious about what they're up to. Are you comfortable walking past them while keeping eye contact with one of them and visibly checking out what they're doing?

- Would you consider walking the streets regularly while wearing an all-red streetwear outfit with a red paisley style bandana? How about a different color,say blue?

- Would you feel safe wandering the neighborhood at night in a drag costume?

- Would you feel safe wearing a black t-shirt with white text announcing that you don't like the music of a popular local rap artist?

If you don't do some otherwise perfectly reasonable and morally activities because it would be irresponsible or unsafe to do so, you're modifying your behavior. If you don't feel that you need to modify your behavior to avoid being a victim of violent crime, chances are it's only because you're very very lucky with your preferences. Some people happen not to want to do any of these activites, of course, but that doesn't change the fact that one can safely engage in them here, but not in any comparable area in the U.S.

Not curious enough to deal with a conversation this crazy, though. Best of luck.

Americans: I haven't heard about anyone having to modify their normal behavior to avoid a violent death. Let's talk about this!

Rest of the west: Can people wear drag downtown without risking their personal safety?

Americans: On second thoughts, let's talk about something else.

the news here on the US can be a bit grim, forgive :P some ppl don't travel i guess.

These fears seem to portray a kind of caricature of a US city that you might get from the media, rather than an accurate lived experience. There are neighborhoods in the US where you'd be concerned about some of those things, but the urban areas I've lived in are nothing like that.

Most Americans do not live in a constant state of mute terror, waiting for the day that some gangster cuts them down.

Of your examples, the only one that remotely resonated was "have you ever crossed the road because you weren't comfortable walking past someone standing on the corner". Yeah, I'll occasionally avoid a crazy person ranting on the corner. Also, I wouldn't walk by a bunch of teenagers while holding eye contact with them, but that's because I'm not a crazy old man. No need to scare some kids minding their own business.

> that's because I'm not a crazy old man.

Look, if only crazy old people make eye contact with each other, your community is not fine. And if everyone is so agitated that they'd be scared if you walked past them and made eye contact... well, that's not the strong testimony against people "living in a constant state of mute terror" that you seem to think it is.

About as convincing as claiming "I'm not gonna take my phone out of my pocket on a train, I'm not crazy! That just happens to be my preference, I don't wish to look crazy like the people who use their phones, nothing to do with crime" would be in [1].

But I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is. Ping me next time you're between jobs. If you live in a high-density area with a high homicide rate, I'll pay you a week's wages if you're willing to loiter on the streets for 3 hours a day every evening in an outfit of my choice and don't become a victim of violent crime by the end of the week. I won't pick an illegal (police or military uniform, revealing clothing) or politically charged outfit. If you're right about U.S. urban safety, this should be easy money.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Bart/comments/dc7b5p/got_robbed_on_...

The brothels bit is oddly specific, but it's worth mentioning consuming prostitution in many European countries (including some of those with top wages) is illegal.

>I can afford to live in a high density city block with a long-term average yearly homicide rate below 4 per 100000 inhabitants.

It's great you gave a clear threshold instead of making it vague. Here are some US cities that would satisfy this criteria according to wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...) : San Diego, San Jose (yeah I'm surprised too..), NYC (also unexpected!), Portland, Seattle.

LOL. That's not the rate of my city, it's the rate of the high density business district I live in. The city itself has a much lower homicide rate, because there are large suburbs where people onpy sleep and nothing ever happens. The homicide rate of Downtown San Jose (the closest equivalent area) is a whopping 41/100k. So not a good look there.

But who is talking about 2 incomes and possibly living even with a partner in one household?

Based on the OPs figures 1 income with the same expenses would be 1m profit, more than income alone in europe.

I don't believe those figures (and they're meaningless for europeans as you can't simply get a job in the US), but if you take them at face value finanically living in the US for a decade is the sensible approach.

Obviously you'd want to leave before your kids went to school

You don't have to believe me, look at the data points. The recipe you are looking for is: senior position at big tech, preferably doing something specialized.

For example: https://www.levels.fyi/companies/facebook/salaries/software-... https://www.levels.fyi/companies/nvidia/salaries/software-en...

>and they're meaningless for europeans as you can't simply get a job in the US

We have plenty of Europeans in big tech, though the usual path is either through attending university in the US or intra-company transfers. You can get a job directly if yoy are extraordinary, but I have not seen that happen very often.

> Obviously you'd want to leave before your kids went to school

We tried this, and the kid refused.

>> Obviously you'd want to leave before your kids went to school

> We tried this, and the kid refused.

That also works the other way.

An American colleague left Denmark so his children could grow up in the USA, but after about 3 months came back because the children missed their personal freedom. (Freedom to walk/cycle home from school, see friends without needing parents to drive them, etc.)

Yeah makes sense.

I attended a boarding school in a third world country, it was a pretty neat childhood!

> An American colleague left Denmark so his children could grow up in the USA, but after about 3 months came back because the children missed their personal freedom. (Freedom to walk/cycle home from school, see friends without needing parents to drive them, etc.)

I saw some videos recommending the Netherlands as the safest and one of the family friendliest places to bring up your children. It was about safe bicycle lanes and safe ways to and from school and all that. Cannot recommend Germany in that regard, because education system here sucks and bicycle lanes are not cleared quickly and early in winter, or not at all. Also many car drivers here feel too much entitlement to speed in the city.

In this regard the Netherlands is ahead of Denmark, and Amsterdam is ahead of Copenhagen — but it would probably still feel like minor quibbling compared to Iowa or wherever my colleague is from.