In the Netherlands, and probably a lot of other EU countries, transport to work has to be compensated by your employer. If you live within biking distance this means providing you a bike (usually via a service like Swapfiets these days), and otherwise you get your train/public transport costs or fuel costs if you drive a car completely covered. It's even tax-deductible I think, though I've never bothered looking into that option since I just take my own bike to work.
I know that having benefits like a free bike feels good, but the total compensation you are getting is much lower than that of people that work for big tech and pay for their own transportation.
But even ignoring all that, money isn't the be-all, end-all. Having worked in the US for a stint, I'll take my "low" pay in the Netherlands any day of the week over rotting away in a soulless US megacorp headed by legitimate psychopaths, where they can decide to fuck you over at a moment's notice for any reason and you have no recourse.
After all, what good is money that you can't spend? If you gave me a trillion dollars but it meant I had to spend 12 hours of my day dedicated to work, what use is that? I'll take my sane working culture I have at the moment despite me earning marginally less (if you ignore literally all the other benefits of living in the Netherlands, that is) all day, every day.
Money isn't everything. People claim it is are often missing something money can't really buy.
The Netherlands has good bicycle infrastructure but the majority of people still go to work by car.
The commute time between countries is similar.
considering i also got free lunch everyday, 24 days of PTO, monthly stipends for gas and app subscriptions, 6 month parental leave, it’s pretty hard for me to look at the european market and see the government mandated some of those benefits but to pay for it i’d make roughly 1/3 to 1/2 what i make in the US, and subsidize the poor performers to boot. literal fucking joke to compare europoor salaries with american lol
Inflation from money printing and immigration is eating away higher salaries and lower costs that made suffering the corporate hell tolerable for many people; and in Europe money printing and immigration is going to collapse the social welfare and quality of life fabric of society.
Most tech companies compensate for costs. My current employer doesn't blink paying ~$60 per day for my parking and lunch on days I come to the office, but that still means I spend 50 min each way getting there. My 2c.
But they aren’t perfect, and they’ve been good relative to other employers.
Having transportation covered is an extremely rare benefit in the US.
A company is also not mandated by law to provide you with a bicycle.
You also do not get your cost fully covered if you drive by car. Currently it's capped at 23 cents per kilometer which is not enough for most cars.
It's not a tax deductible, it's just (income) tax free.
If “employers” want people back in seats, let’s just make it law that they have to compensate you for the travel and expenses and time of travel by either cutting work hours or pay overtime, and pay for all the expenses associated with commuting; or at least make them deductible from taxes like all other income generating activities.