What's weird is every time I've brought it up, either my comment gets buried or a bunch of excuse makers jump in and say "it's not like that, it's just you..." Not until very recently have I noticed other people talking about the lovely EU propaganda and not getting buried.

Corporate speak. Put a positive spin on everything!!!

But no, gotta charge hundreds for in-car map updates (that only get updated as often as you purchase them) and radio/traffic subscription that mobile apps charge a fraction of and always up-to-date for as long as you keep the apps updated.

Bluetooth is just so encumbered with legacy concepts and limitations. It hosts a myriad of protocols that don't benefit users but are easy to implement to check the Bluetooth feature checkbox. There's a full generation of Bluetooth equipped cars that only support headset or handsfree protocols but not A2DP or other useful protocols people want.

China is a prime example of subpar image/PR management. They really gotta take a hint and learn from the Germans, who are well respected and have lots of positive stereotypes parroted around the internet "work-life balance, efficiency, timeliness, high standards of living, LE FREE HEALTHCARE!!!"

IMO Germany is worse than America (the country they love to poo-poo on) and even China in so many respects. Yet America and China are the places people call "third world" nowadays.

- Trains are constantly late.

- Majority of offices don't have airconditioning or any air ventilation system (in fact, my previous workplace of 300 employees was in a building with NO insulation or fire alarm/suppression system!)

- Card payments are not accepted in at least 50% of places, particularly restaurants. Cash only in 2019 (can anyone say TAX EVASION?).

- People boast about contactless payments which just became mainstream last year like it's the second coming of sliced bread.

- Boasting about the public transportation system which is only the best if you're a student with a massive surplus of time/shortage of cash, otherwise it takes you anywhere from 10 mins to 1 hour (depending on time of day and route) more to get between two places compared to a car. Heaven forbid you have a family, then public transportation even costs more than having a car.

- Employers are extremely exploitative, especially in tech and especially startups - I'd say some places in America/Asia have better work-life and are less toxic than German companies. The only difference between America/China and Germany is the latter has employment laws that are actually enforced, but only if you go to court (but contrary to popular belief, don't make you "unfireable", just allow the employee to get a few thousand EUR as compensation for when the employer does try their hand at something exploitative - and they will, hoping you're not aware of your rights)

- Virtue signalling on all sorts of things. Not gonna get into politics/immigration, there's plenty on that elsewhere. But German companies love to boast about EQUALITY FOR ALL, DISCRIMINATION IS DISGUSTING. All while lowballing immigrants in terms of salary and imposing an industrial-grade glass ceiling for any non-German who tries to work here. E.g. they will boast how their company of 300 has over 80 nationalities and work exclusively in English (because 90% of clients are American/British) but oddly enough, everyone in mid-upper/upper management is white and German. Maybe throw in the occasional white non-German European or token Indian guy for DIVERSITY!!!111!!!!1

- Diesel, until recently, was the bragging point for efficiency. I remember not 5 years ago, there would be so many Europeans in comments sections of (any discussion remotely car/transportation related) poo-pooing on the "dumb Americans" for still using gasoline and polluting the environment by not getting "the bigger MPGs" using diesel. LOL.

- Free healthcare isn't actually free if you're not like the classic local European who still is a student with 0 work experience at age 30 shitposting on the internet. Look at the "KV" (health insurance) field of your payslip: I pay hundreds of EUR every MONTH as a healthy young person for "free healthcare". Out of sight, out of mind right?

TLDR China is about as attractive as any other country on the planet, they just have subpar image management and PR at the moment

FREE healthcare means that everyone is covered, even if unemployed or working for low wages. The more you earn, the more you pay (capped at ~400€). Your family is insured for no extra payment. You obviously don‘t fit the system because you believe you should pay less (single, young, healthy) but that‘s exactly not what it is. Poor, old, unhealthy people, those who suffer in life are protected. Cancer won‘t bankrupt your family, you won‘t end on the street. That‘s free healthcare - dignity! Not paying little no nothing if you‘re young and healthy.

> Cancer won‘t bankrupt your family, you won‘t end on the street.

> That‘s free healthcare - dignity!

I guess the middle age male homeless sitting and sleeping all over the cities and transport venues damage your vision slightly. Don't even try the narrative "it's eastern Europeans, it's their own fault".

Have a look at the large Canadian cities: Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. Or France, whose residents use the three letter acronym SDF to refer to the homeless.

Anecdotally, I've heard that a significant proportion of them have mental health issues for which they refuse treatment, free or not. It's also a problem of housing accessibility (interesting article: https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2017/mar/22/finl...) and support for transitioning to gainful employment.

Fact is, most people who are legally in Germany for >3 months are legible for Hartz 4: a free apartment, free heating and a few hundred Euro. And free healthcare.

Free apartment for a foreigner living in the country only over 3 months?! Dude, people on employment contract with over average income, staying in the country for years are having difficulties to find anything for rent in any major city, buying is out of question. Did you swallow an info brochure of German ministry for social affairs?

Well, there’s your problem.

If you are unemployed, there is hardly any reason to stay in a big city.

Sounds like universal healthcare, not free healthcare.

The complain is that how can something be "free" when someone else has to pay for it. The definition of free literally means that someone else has to pay for it (externalities and labor to extract resources from the land count as payment). Real "free" anything where nobody pays anything doesn't exist. It's a strawman.

Thousand time yes! In case one is not fluent in German they behave like shark smelling the blood. Overtime, underdog tasks, imposing ridiculous decisions, defaming reprimands (Abmahnung). The labour code is on one's side, but good luck finding a lawyer who'll engage in an individual case.

> All while lowballing immigrants in terms of salary and imposing an industrial-grade glass ceiling for any non-German who tries to work here. E.g. they will boast how their company of 300 has over 80 nationalities and work exclusively in English (because 90% of clients are American/British) but oddly enough, everyone in mid-upper/upper management is white and German.

Forget about English speaking environment in Germany - it's a trap, especially when managers and directors are German. Anytime the shit hits the fan, the communication fallbacks into local language because that's the language of the labour code. They will try to screw one over while wrongfully accusing of various things and breaching rules which previously "didn't matter".

Germany is different.

I think there are just different ups and downs.

FYI the worst part about German startups has to be the lack of big hits, with big exists, thereby making all the pain not really worth it. Startups are only worth it if there's a rational means to payout which I don't think exists frankly anywhere outside if the US.

Precisely my point but some countries and their people (or their PR team, depending how much tinfoil you're wearing) try to have you believe that it's nothing but upsides. E.g. The ample "Germany good and better, America bad and dumb" themed comments across the internet we've seen in the past decade.

Stupidly enough, I believed those comments back in the day, moved to Germany, only to find out I'd been fed a crap ton of lies.

Is Germany that much better when you can get fined if you flip someone off (say an idiotic driver on the road) and there are contracts (where you're usually locked in for 2 years with autorenewal and requiring 3 or 6 months' notice to quit) for literally everything?

And paying into a national health system might not be free its a lot cheaper than the USA's model.

Cool, why haven't you moved there?

That said, I made my bed and I'll lie in it for a while. Already looking at options for where to move, but I wasn't about to move my life here and ragequit after 1-2 years like most people do (the type of person that moves here seems to not care very much about the financial and stress cost of moving internationally, how ~1 year of work on their resume + 6 months jobless looks bad on their resume, etc)

Maybe not China, salaries and high-tech life there sound appealing but the firewalled internets is a big turn-off, but definitely not remaining in Germany now that I've done enough time.

Especially the "public transport is slow/expensive" part. It seems it's one of the best (in the western hemisphere at least) and that even compared with NYC/Montreal/Toronto.

(But of course YMMV)

Your analysis is correct, I enjoy working in China the most. Work hours are not bad but after work hours are lot more interesting.

There is lots of hustle and bustle, and the co-workers actually do invite you to their family events.

I am lot more happy in China and play to have a family here.

I'd rather work in a place with "work-life balance" (whatever the hell that is these days, 8-6?) but such places are disappearing all over the planet. Even in Europe, work-life balance can be goddamn horrible in tech, especially if you work in a startup. Unpaid overtime is common, in a recent interview at a startup of 70 employees, I was told "our official working hours are 9am-6pm but... well, we're a startup, so you know... hint hint nudge nudge".

If what places like Blind are saying is true (that pay in the east is rising to SV-like levels), China and Asian countries with "long working hours" may be viable places to work in the future, since long hours are already a norm in America and becoming the new European standard too.

Some people would work more or much more (they ended up being "nudged" into management, the poor souls, they regretted it dearly), but as a software engineer the market is so much in your favour that you can always go somewhere else.

But I'm making a solid $20k less than I could make elsewhere at my current role. To me though, it's worth it for a working environment where I wake up with a smile at the thought of driving in, rather than waking up with a sick pit of dread in my gut every day.

Having lived and worked in Europe (Germany) for a few years now, I can confirm that this is the biggest lie/propaganda ever. It's particularly bad in the city I live in, where "bErLiN iS a PoOr N cHeAp CiTy So ThE sAlArIeS aReN't HiGh" is a meme disguised as a fact and spread around, especially to non-German newcomers. The massive salary spread is alive and well in Europe, but the people who benefit from it aren't talking about it enough (or at all, due to culture).

"Salaries are low in Europe" or "more fair across jobs" fooled even me when I first arrived, but now I see it for what it is - a salary suppression technique, a very effective one too since it's, by now, basically self-propagating. That "30k average wage before taxes" (that's the German figure, not sure about Denmark but they're all just as low and rigged) actually includes freelancers, part-timers and (I'm sure) even the under/unemployed! But you'll only know that after researching for the fine-print, a lot of times people parrot the "30k average" as a benchmark for full-time employment.

Some true salary figures from people I know in Berlin (I've seen matching payslips, so they're 100% not lying) include 65k for a frontend web dev with 2 years experience, 55k for marketing with 3 years experience, 60k for a junior non-technical PO. Mid-career devs (8-10 years experience) pull in 90k easy, while management/directors in startups get paid 120-200k. Currency is EUR btw, not $.

Yes all these figures, in Berlin, where they tell foreigners on Internet forums "45-60k is a LOT for a dev with 5-10 years experience, because cost of living in Berlin is low (it's not) so come on over and relocate!"

This is not helped by Europeans (particularly Germans and Scandinavians) being very reluctant to talk about salary, they are much more tight-lipped than Americans. So all you're gonna hear is mostly how Karen who moved to Berlin from America for her German boyfriend is making 28k at Zalando with her 3 years of experience. That's really the result of very effective wage-suppression propaganda - not a true reflection of market rates and nowhere near what informed people are getting paid.

We must have very different experience. I've found that people from the US are very reluctant to talk about how much they make; unless they're in the top brackets.

I would also argue that 60k+ is good for a junior position. We might disagree.

Yep!

There are better ways to look these things up, like trade unions. There are plenty of them, and they all publish income data on a regular basis.

And it isn't something new, it's been like this since post-WW2.

Spot on. Companies often pay "marketing/PR" agencies to take all sort of actions to push salaries and expectations down, prevent unionization, suppress rumors about wrongdoing and so on.

Many of those agencies pay freelance private investigators, "media influencers" and even black hats.

The techniques include spreading rumors, writing articles, commenting on forums, creating fake reviews on glassdoors.

Even HR employees use wage-suppression techniques by publishing fake job ads, doing unneded interviews and so on.

However, 90k per year for a senior engineer is peanuts compared to the shareholder value a well-placed engineer can generate. I think this is reflected in the compensation of the major tech companies in the US; they can easily be double this amount or more. And you'd be hard-pressed to find those salaries for a non-director employed position in Europe. Some consultants can demand this rate, which interestingly provides a clear image on what a company is willing to pay for the right to fire someone at will.

What we're lacking in Europe, apart from seeing through the propaganda, is enough companies that can properly utilize technology and would benefit from attracting the best engineers. That would lead to better pay.

Don't forget, however, that cost of living is generally cheaper in much of Europe (maybe not in Switzerland or Scandinavia though), than in the big tech-hub cities in America. Rent is cheaper, food is cheaper (and better quality), healthcare is much cheaper. Also, you can pretty easily get along without a car, which is a huge expense for Americans.

I found food to be similar in price or cheaper when I was on holiday in San Francisco. Avoiding the car is doable if you live in one of these city centers, but then the dwelling will be 400k and up. And a car will run you ~7000k USD per year in TCO, unless you drive an old beater. Taxation is around 50% in aggregate, probably slightly higher if you take care and count all the smaller taxes.

Guaranteed healthcare, workers' rights, vacations, parental leave and social safety net in case of disaster are fantastic, though. Although you'd probably get better _treatment_ if you've good good insurance in the US. It's probably a better quality of life if you're in the bottom 60% of earning power.

I specifically mentioned Scandinavia as an exception in my post.

And Norway is even more exceptional, because it's not even in the EU, unlike the other Scandinavian nations.

>It's not as crazy expensive here as in the major tech hubs, of course, but you'll still pay at least 300k USD for a completely average dwelling

That's not far from what you'd pay in one of America's larger tech-hub cities, and far less than you'd pay in Silicon Valley.

I'm not trying to claim that Europe is as cheap as Thailand, I'm just pointing out that America is really expensive to live in these days in the nicer cities. Even in smaller crappy places, the rent has gotten ridiculous in the past decade or two.

But again, for the rest of your stuff, as I said, I specifically called out Scandinavia and Switzerland as exceptional and expensive. From what I saw in Germany, it's really cheap to live there compared to a major tech hub in the US, and the quality of life is much better.

If I were to guess, I would say that the lower bound is higher, giving a skewed distribution with a big bloc of salaries around the same avg. range. Couple this with a reluctance for high earners to speak openly about it and you have the illusion of everybody getting roughly the same.

A very clear sign that wages are kept superficially low, is that as a contractor I can get away with asking 3x what I would as a perm developer. In theory I get less job security this way, but in reality there is so much demand that this is a non-issue.

In reality, apart from some niche areas and companies, speaking in broad population terms, it is best under current economic culture and terms to treat every job, even "full-time with benefits" ones, as contract jobs subject to instant termination.

For the broad population, there really isn't much of a job stability ecosystem in the economy any longer. For the tech employment scene in general terms, job hop for the salary gains until you plateau out, work to your best abilities while you seek out and develop your next local maxima and start job hopping again towards that. Most managers, companies, institutions and the general market speak through their actions that they're perfectly fine with this state of affairs, protestations to the contrary. Let the economy speak, listen intently, and follow through the words to their logical conclusion.

I'm not a fan of this, as we're losing significant "complexity cohesion" where we comprehend and reason about complex solutions to solve entire complex problem domains which only come with time and stability as we are still emotional creatures that don't respond well to chronic stress. But scraping away micron-layers of low-hanging fruit will eventually, at some point before the heat death of the Universe, get us to approximately the same place.

Huh, salary is basically public information in most Scandinavian countries..

I currently live and work in Germany and I know that here it is much more tight lipped, it might even be a fireable offense for you to talk about your salary, which might explain why people don't really talk about it.

50-65k EUR as a starting salary in Berlin with under 2 years experience will make many people's eyeballs pop out and they'll start rambling about how "30k is the average and that's just disgustingly overpaid". Truth is though that it's reasonable to find those (tech or nontech, the trick is to not accept the first shit job, probably from Rocket Internet, that you get offered within 2 weeks of applying) and it's not overvalued - people making 30k are the ones being underpaid.

Also $100k for FAANG in the Silicon Valley is nothing. Assuming single young worker, 60+k EUR in Germany would be very competitive with the 100-150k USD range in the valley because you can rent a NICE studio apartment for 800-1000 EUR, spending 30-40 EUR on a night out is already plenty and in bigger cities like Berlin, you can get away without a car (it's still uncomfortable and inconvenient, but much less so if you're single, and certainly much better than BART and 99% of American cities).

If you're taking 6 figures in a LCOL US city where you're socking away 70% of your income as savings at under age 30, then yes, there's no equivalent to be found in Europe.

It's the digital, more obnoxious version of a kid screaming ME ME ME at the sports team draft for adults. All those bullshitters with too much time on their hands (ironically at work) begging for the attention of recruiters and prospective employers to hire them.

Can confirm the same situation in Europe (Germany). With that said, I'd advise against joining a startup. In Germany, even with stereotypically strict laws favoring the employee, startups are extremely abusive.

- They will lowball you - They will lie to you about all the "great perks", mostly free fruit. Very rarely do they offer stock options and if they do, the terms designed to screw you over as much as possible (e.g. if the company doesn't go public or get bought over in 5 years, the value of any options is zero) - They expect you to work long hours, disregarding any "work-life balance" BS stereotypes about the way Europeans work

Not really. Here in Germany (where Glassdoor isn't even as popular as in US/English speaking countries) I've noticed the salary skews towards the low end because A) employers are bombing their profiles with fake salary figures and/or B) entry-level to lower-mid tier employees are more likely to drop numbers. Can't imagine how much worse the propagation of false info is in other countries where Glassdoor is more popular.

Specifically in Berlin, where "bErLiN iS a PoOr N cHeAp CiTy So ThE sAlArIeS aReN't HiGh" might as well be a meme because it's the standard welcome message for foreigners, if you negotiate your pay based on Glassdoor info, you're going to be screwing yourself out of thousands of €€€.

None of the non-tech crowd is going to admit they're being paid 55-65k brutto (before taxes) with 3-5 years of experience. I know people like this and have seen their payslips so I know they aren't lying. You only hear about the non-techies making 24-35k from their small startups or Zalando.

Same for dev/tech. You'll only hear the same bit of info that "45-60k is a LOT for a dev with 5-10 years experience, because cost of living in Berlin is low (it's not) so come on over and relocate!". The devs/engineers making 65k starting with 2 years of experience, mid-level devs pulling 70-90k and management/directors pulling 120-200k in Berlin aren't opening their mouths.

If I put my tinfoil hat on, I'd say there's a concerted effort in Europe to keep salaries down by keeping information suppressed/spreading lies (I see this a lot on Reddit/HN too in the form of comments)

Just the same, if the company is trying to bomb average salaries, then they're posting that they don't pay what I want and I'm avoiding them anyway. (and it sounds like a good thing if that's how they operate)

But good points. It's certainly something to be skeptical about, even if one doesn't want to go full tin-foil about it. ;)

Glassdoor can be relevant for American salaries thanks to the sheer quantity of figures being posted, but I've found salary fields to be sparsely populated for Germany (where I live now), and a few European and Asian countries I've checked out. It's kinda dangerous in the sense you could look up figures on Glassdoor and 9 times out of 10, you'll end up lowballing yourself if you try to negotiate salary IRL based on what you saw there.